How to Explain the Unexplainable?

The other night, my husband and daughter were spending some quality time together. Or so he thought.

She brought some toys and books. He brought himself. They would play whatever game--Old Maid? Concentration?--that a 4-year-old might want.

Except that the drama on CNN was high. Strangers were adjusting their gas masks. Military men were pointing to maps. Correspondents were narrating, stream-of-consciousness style, about moods and fears and hits.

The war was taking Daddy away, once again.

His daughter broke down in tears.

Lauren has already heard the story about the bad man in the desert. Frankly, the tale is getting old. It can’t compare with the one about the magic bird in the park, or the bed that floats the little girl and her sleeping mother through the clouds.

Besides, Daddy is back. The Bad Man in the Desert has served its purpose: It explained Daddy’s “little trip” to the Persian Gulf. My husband is a journalist. He also writes for The Times.

“So now it will be like it was before, right, Mommy?” is what Lauren says now that her father is back.

So I tell her that it’s true. Everything will be just fine.

But, of course, it is not. Lauren knows that too.

Her parents these days seem to have other things on their minds. They are rarely home, and when they are, the air seems full of gloom. Even when they play, their efforts are half-baked. The television is always on.

Our family is hardly unique. Parents everywhere are struggling to explain about war, which, try as they might, never comes out making much sense.

How do you explain to a child why men fight, that this time the blood is not just pretend?

I tried, of course, in a rather elaborate story about bad people and armies and getting the land back. Lauren asked a few whys, to which I duly replied.

Then she said that she had another question to ask. She furrowed her brows and drew in a deep breath.

“Mommy, does fingernail polish come off in the water?” is what she said.

So we put the war away--or tried to, at least--because it never seems to stay put. It is thousands of miles away, yet its specter roams among us, spooking us at every turn. We are not sleeping well. Neither is anyone we know.

This war is personal, in a way that Panama, for example, never was. More of us are there, leaving more of us behind. If you don’t know someone gambling with his or her life in the Persian Gulf, then you know of someone who does. Mothers with sons are edgy about the possibility of a draft.

The stakes of war have never been as high. Modern weaponry, with its gee-whiz ways of destruction, is no longer just the stuff of high-tech sci-fi. We know more now, and that seems always on our minds. We all find ourselves debating scenarios that begin ominously with, “What if . . . .”

Television, of course, is the great joiner here. People are watching a war--at work, at home, in stores and with their friends. The tension shows.

The day after the war exploded, the cafeteria here at The Times offered all its employees free food. It was just the thing--not counting prescription drugs--to help calm people’s nerves.

As I write this, I can hear television sets blaring grim news from the front lines. Here in the newsroom, reporters and editors are standing in knots, stone-faced silent, taking it all in.

“Did you hear?” my editor asks me as he walks by. “They’re bombing Israel again.”

“Oh, God,” I say.

I am at a loss for anything more profound.

Lauren is right. The tale of the Bad Man in the Desert is really getting old.