For better and for worse, these findings transformed incest from a dirty little secret of American family life into an American obsession. During the 1980s and early 1990s, several cultural icons, including Susanne Somers, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur, Roseanne Barr, and Oprah Winfrey, went public as incest survivors. Incest memoirs hit best-seller lists. “The Color Purple,” whose protagonist had borne two of her father’s babies, won the Pulitzer Prize. Sympathetic and sensational incest stories proliferated on TV news shows and after-school specials and in newspapers and magazines.

Reported cases of child abuse and neglect surged from 669,000 in 1976 to 2.9 million in 1993. During those years, according to “Victims of Memory” author Mark Pendergrast, up to one million families were torn apart by false accusations of sexual abuse.

Mine was one of them.

Many of these accusations were made by adult daughters who claimed to have repressed and then recovered memories of childhood molestation by their fathers.

I was one of them.

In courtrooms around the country, daughters sat sobbing on witness stands, pointing across the room at their fathers, listing the atrocities their fathers had committed against their bodies and their souls.

If I’d been just a bit more suggestible (more impulsive, more vindictive), I might have been one of them.

Here’s how I became convinced that this lie was true.

In 1982, I edited a book by one of those pioneering feminist researchers. I was shocked and moved by what I learned, working on the book I’ll call “The Incest Secret.” With missionary zeal — and without considering the tunnel vision, good guy–bad guy polarization, and dangerous excesses that often accompany that kind of heart-thumping fervor — I spent the next few years writing exposés of child sexual abuse for local and national newspapers and magazines.

As a journalist doing what journalists do — slouching toward objectivity, stumbling over my preexisting prejudices and proclivities — I helped spread the panic: basing conclusions on skewed studies I believed to be accurate, citing manipulated statistics I trusted, quoting experts who proved more attached to their points of view than they were to the facts.

Along with other writers on both sides of the issue, I used quotation marks to declare my allegiance, calling it recovered memory, not “recovered memory”; incest survivor, not “incest survivor”; “false memory syndrome” not False Memory Syndrome.

I didn’t just hand out the Kool-Aid. I drank it. I didn’t just write about recovered memories; I spent a decade trying to recover my own. Shortly after the 1988 publication of the Bible of the recovered memory movement, “The Courage to Heal,” I joined the ranks of self-identified incest survivors and accused my father of molesting me.

The full story of how I came to that conclusion is complicated. [To read an interview with Meredith Maran, click here.] During that time, I was in love with a woman who identified strongly as an incest survivor. I was in therapy with a woman who believed in recovered memory. Many of my friends were incest survivors. I’d been plagued by strange dreams — dreams in which little girls whose fathers had raped them told me, night after night, that I was one of them. I made a list of the “evidence” and presented it to my brother over dinner one night. I’ve never seen him look so miserable.

“I’ve read your articles,” he said finally. “I know this kind of thing happens all the time. I just never thought –”

“I know,” I said. “Me neither. It took me a long time and a lot of therapy to put the clues together,” I said. “But there’s no other way it makes sense.”

“Doesn’t that seem weird to you?” he asked. “Your girlfriend was molested. Your best friend. Now you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. “It’s shocking to me, too,” I said. “But I really need you to believe me.” 

“I do,” my brother said. “I do believe you.”

In the 1990s, the backlash began.

In March 1992, accused parents banded together to form the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). “When the memory is distorted, or confabulated,” the FMSF newsletter declared, “the result can be what has been called the False Memory Syndrome; a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships are centered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believes.”

Although false memory syndrome was the invention of laypeople, not a medically identified condition, the phrase burned its way across the country, setting off the firestorm that would come to be known as “the memory war.”

Even characterizing the conflict was cause for controversy. Was the “outing” of child sexual abuse a brave crusade to save children’s lives, or a witch hunt reminiscent of others in the American hall of shame?

Nearly overnight, “false memory” replaced “recovered memory” on the American tongue. Therapists were sued for implanting false memories, stripped of their licenses, ordered to pay six-figure settlements to clients who’d once credited them with saving their incest-ravaged lives. Accused molesters’ convictions were overturned. Many but not all of the accused were set free.

Families devastated by incest accusations were now bifurcated, also, by warring beliefs about truth and memory. If the outraged parents — my outraged parents — were right, they were the victims, and their daughters were — I was — the perpetrator. If the daughters were right, we were the victims, our parents the perpetrators, denying the trauma they’d inflicted upon us. Each side allied itself with a phalanx of opposing experts who built constituencies and careers on unproved certainties.

When the culture tilted toward disbelief, I leaned that way too. In 1996, I faced the truth that my accusation was false. I apologized to my father and my family, quit incest therapy, and broke up with — truth be told, was dumped by — my incest survivor lover.

A few years later, just when I’d fully regained my mind and my memories, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and began to lose his.

Redemption-wise, my father’s diagnosis left me two options.

I could hope my father would forget the wrong I did him, along with the other bits and bytes that were slipping through the fissures in his brain. Or I could convince him to have a conversation with me about what I did and why I did it and how sorry I was.

A girl can dream: maybe he’d even forgive me, so I might step into that shaft of light and begin to forgive myself. But first I needed to understand. How had I — more neurotic than some, but surely less neurotic than many — come to believe that my father, a man lacking the cruelty to squash a spider, had sexually abused me throughout my childhood and spent the next twenty years covering it up?

How had so many other people come to believe the same thing at the same time?

In “Creating Hysteria,” Joan Acocella’s 1999 exposé of the sex-abuse panic of the 1980s, she wrote, “One of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of psychotherapy seems to be coming to an end.”

Acocella’s prediction was true, and false. The sex-abuse panic did recede. But ten years later, it still hasn’t come to an end.

“When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again,” Margaret Talbot wrote in The New York Times Magazine on January 7, 2001. “Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80′s — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities.

“Of course, if you were one of the dozens of people prosecuted in these cases, one of those who spent years in jails and prisons on wildly implausible charges, one of those separated from your own children, forgetting would not be an option. You would spend the rest of your life wondering what hit you, what cleaved your life into the before and the after, the daylight and the nightmare.”

As Talbot says, the panic hasn’t ended for the preschool teachers and fathers and uncles who were convicted of child sexual abuse 20 years ago and remain incarcerated today.

It hasn’t ended for the children, now adults, who testified against those prisoners at age four or 10 or 30, some of whom have since acknowledged that their accusations were false.

I’m guessing it hasn’t ended for the 1.8 million people who have bought copies of “The Courage to Heal.” Or for the book’s coauthor, Laura Davis, whose books and workshops are focused, now, on forgiveness and reconciliation.

It hasn’t ended for the tens of thousands of families still struggling to recover from false accusations made decades ago.

Most important, it hasn’t ended for a society that decries the mass hysteria of Salem and McCarthyism while continuing to elect presidents, wage wars, and deny its citizens health care and civil rights based on confabulations presented as facts.

Recent American history is rife with examples of the damage done when millions of people become convinced of the same lie at the same time. Choose your favorite fiction from this list, or add your own.

The George W. Bush “victory” in the 2000 election. The list of books that Sarah Palin allegedly banned from the Wasilla Public Library. The persistent rumor that her youngest son was actually her daughter’s child. The allegations of Barack Obama’s foreign birth, terrorist associations, reverse racism, and socialist tendencies — first promulgated to prevent his presidency, later used to derail it.

How many and how much have we lost in the seemingly endless War on Terror, triggered by the fictional connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks? The phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” invented as a cry for war, has become shorthand for cynical political manipulation and the mass, willful suspension of disbelief.

President Obama’s efforts to provide Americans with health care were nearly defeated by the myth that if the program were enacted, “death panels” run by government bureaucrats would decide whether Granny lives or dies.

Gay people’s right to marry (my right to marry) is still being denied in most of the “united” states, ostensibly to protect the heterosexual nuclear family from destruction, and — wait, it gets more incredible still — to keep American children from being recruited to homosexuality in their classrooms.

In November 2008, the Wall Street Journal predicted, “In 300 years’ time, our descendants — who will, of course, pride themselves on their superior rationality — will read of the recovered-memory-driven prosecutions of parents (usually fathers) as we now read of the Salem witch trials.”

“We may expect further such episodes of popular delusion and the madness of crowds,” the article warned, “unless we straighten out our thoughts about the way our minds work — or, if that is not possible, at least about how they don’t work.”

I wanted to look back, 20 years later, at one episode of popular delusion — mine, ours. My painful, public exposé of the way my mind worked and the way it didn’t is offered up with remorse, yes, but also with a pulse of hope: that I, and we, will learn from this history so we’re not destined to repeat it.

Meredith Maran is a contributor to Salon. Her book “My Lie,” from which this is excerpted, comes out from Jossey-Bass on Sept. 14.

My father complained endlessly about the ever-increasing piles of stuff. My mother countered that this was her hobby. I was about 10 when I realized my house wasn’t normal. Back then, we didn’t have a show like A&E’s “Hoarders” to explain this was an OCD disorder. Instead, I would fret about the dust and dirt. I may have been the only sixth grader who ran home from school to clean. I kept the living room, dining room, kitchen and bathrooms sparkling. During this time, one sister got involved with drugs and the other got married at age 18 — to escape our house. My mom started doing flea markets twice a week. During the summer, I was forced to go with her and help, even though there were no prices on things, the booth was overflowing, and there were outhouses for bathrooms. I did an accounting of her costs — what she took in versus what she spent — and she didn’t even break even. Her “hobby” was an ever-consuming need. The need grew larger and larger.

After every personal crisis, more stuff would appear: After my brother or sister went to drug rehab, after some nasty argument between my mom and dad. The basement filled up, then the den, the attic, and the garage filled to the ceiling. It was hard to stake out my territory and keep my own space from being overtaken. My mother would buy pieces of furniture saying she was going to resell them, and they wound up in my room or my sister’s room. Furniture lined the walls. Furniture was placed in front of other furniture, stacked on top of other furniture. Even the drawers became repositories for smaller “collections.” Do you know how many silver spoons can fit into one drawer?

In college, I was desperate to escape the house, but I was also protective of my mother. My father dragged us all to family counseling. He complained about the lack of space and the difficulty in cleaning. So did my sister and I. But the idiot therapist said it was my mother’s house, that she should be able to do what she wanted. No consideration that it was my father’s house. No consideration for my sister’s and my feelings. It was put up or shut up. So I shut up, but I also stopped cleaning obsessively.

It’s hard to explain the conflict that lives in a child of a hoarder. I used to have fantasies of getting the house completely clean and making my mom and dad very happy. After all, my mother would always complain that we never helped her. But if we tried to straighten up, she would complain that she couldn’t find anything. We were never, ever allowed to throw anything out. She would check the trash to make sure we didn’t get rid of anything. It was her house and her things — and yet, there was some cognitive disconnect between caring for her house or her things. She had never claimed any responsibility for the massive pile of junk that accumulated in the house, the yard, the garage — even cars left in the driveway would get boxes placed in them. To vacuum and dust was a major undertaking. There were knickknacks everywhere. Boxes, books, dolls, china, my mother’s specialty linens. Do you know how much mold and mildew linens acquire in a damp basement? People entering the house would sometimes turn around and leave. It took me a long time to stop wanting to help my mother, to realize that there was no helping her at all.

When I got married and moved to my own home, Mom filled up the areas I had always kept cleaned — the living room, dining room and kitchen. My dad also divorced my mom, after 43 years of marriage. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Dad was 72 when he joined the Peace Corps and was sent to the Solomon Islands. He was thrilled to have one suitcase to carry all of his possessions. I guess spending years of your life walking in an obstacle course would make a person appreciate the freedom of fewer possessions. Around this time, my mom also received a notice from the township about the junk in the yard. The yard got cleaned, then inevitably it would fill back up until the township would complain again. In my mom’s eyes, it was the neighbors’ fault.

Thanks to my mom, I do have an appreciation of quality furniture and antiques. Thanks to my mom, I struggle on a daily basis to not accumulate items. I throw many things out. I have a two-box pile of “treasures” in a spare bedroom, and you can walk through the rooms in my house without tripping. But I am always on the lookout for moments when I hold on, a bit too hard.

Mom has Alzheimer’s now. She built a cocoon of belongings around her, and now the cocoon is around her mind. Her bedroom, living room and hallway are not as cluttered as before, because Mom needs to use a walker to get around. But the den and cellar are still wall-to ceiling junk.

How do you explain the mental illness that is hoarding? It can be so heartbreaking, intolerable and damaging. I love my mom, but I still harbor so much hurt that her love of stuff trumped her love of her children, her grandchildren and especially my dad.

It’s been so bittersweet watching A&E’s show “Hoarders.” Watching these people accumulate things — food, animals, trash, anything — it seems so clear that the goal is to fill space, to cover some gaping void. I think I’m finally realizing Mom didn’t make a choice — it was just her imperfect way of coping with life.

Of course I loved my baby. All parents love their children. You see genetic connections instantly: He’s got your eyes, she’s got your nose. When Sam choked on his fingers, Fitzsimmons said, “Look, he’s just like you.” I’d heard a theory that all babies look like their dads in the first few months, evolution’s trick to make you love your child. I wanted to, but what was to love in this 8-pound bundle of pee and puke? Worse, he wasn’t even a Brit. Since leaving California Pacific Medical Center in March, we hadn’t had time to register him with the U.K. Consulate. It was like a low-stakes version of “Rosemary’s Baby.” Oh no, you’ve given birth to … an American.

What made Sarah’s inquiry more barbed was the knowledge that it wasn’t a real question. It was the kind of softball query journalists lobbed to Obama in his first two weeks. “Does the president agree that the United States of America is the greatest country in the world?” Both Sarah and I knew there was only one answer: “Yeah, I love my baby. He’s awesome.” But that wasn’t precise, exactly. Memories of bawling and burping stained my mind; I smelled vomit on my collar. I wanted to ask, “Have you met him?” Instead, I said: “He’s OK.”

Sarah’s face creased into an expression of motherly frustration, a look that said: Oh, you damn Brits, always with the self-deprecation. The irony was that “OK” was what I’d spent nine months hoping. During every ultrasound, every obstetrician visit, every drip of Pitocin and dropping heartbeat of Fitzsimmons’ 36-hour labor and emergency C-section, all I wished was for mother and baby to be OK. Should I have asked to love my son as well? I had a lot to learn.

Over the next six weeks, I learned how to give Sam medicine with a syringe in the side of his mouth: Mylicon for gas, Nystatin for yeast, Colic Calm for reflux. I learned how to calm him when agitated, how to bathe him, how to bottle feed. That last battle included six thankless weeks of feeding in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the hallway and the darkened garage. (Sometimes it felt less like childcare and more like a demented game of Clue — and I knew who’d end up in the ballroom with the rope.)

I learned that my son was afraid of loud noises, crinkly paper and sneezes. He was interested in people, uncomfortable in hot weather, wary in water. He suffered from reflux — heartburn-causing colic — so Fitzsimmons ditched anything that might affect her breast milk: soy, tomatoes, nuts, citrus, even dairy. Given his stomach problems, I was cautious of reading too much into his personality. The same applied to myself. My own character was eroding under the endless waves of burping, feeding and changing. Resignation replaced resilience, lethargy love. My last redeeming qualities were abandoning me and I could no longer blame the absence of ice cream. Even my humor decamped, disheartened by the lack of movie nights or hot dates, and lukewarm dinners. I was mean to my wife and resentful of my son. This wasn’t the fatherhood I’d hoped for, nor was I the father I’d imagined.

Unfairly, it seemed to me that parenting was a one-way wire transfer of care. Friends told us about the sacrifice — but this wasn’t selflessness, this was fraud. Parenthood was a gigantic Ponzi scheme, each generation leeching love from the one preceding. And everyone but me was in on the scam. “We’re so happy to hear your news!” claimed the cards from friends and family. No, you’re not. You knew about this. You’re glad that we’re not sleeping, that we’re hissing at each other at 2 in the morning, that our kid has it coming out of both ends. When the UPS man delivered flowers, I thought: Great, I can’t even feed my kid. Now I have to keep your chrysanthemums alive?

Five thousand miles from home, we felt loveless and isolated. I reached out to my mum and dad in Britain and told them how I was feeling. “Hang in there,” said my mother, “it won’t last forever.”

My father counseled generosity and fortitude. “God knows I did some shameful things when you were born,” he said, “but your girl needs you now.”

Right, I said aloud, but thought, Balls to fortitude. Tell me about the shameful things.

While I floundered, Sam flourished. At the 2-month mark he was off the charts for height. Everywhere we went, the bus, the park, the library, people said, “He’s a big baby.” Everything about him was big: the rocker, the cradle, the crib the size of a golf cart. And the bills. He was going through nappies like tortilla chips. Parenting wasn’t care, it was capitalism. How many nursing bras did one woman need? How did our kid outgrow clothes daily? I felt like the Incredible Hulk’s tailor.

But mum was right, it didn’t last. It wasn’t me who changed, though, it was Sam. In months 3 and 4, he reached out for more and carried me with him. His neck muscles developed. He pulled objects into his mouth. He drank milk from the bottle. “That’s amazing,” said my mother, as Sam and I Skyped during a feed. In my parents’ faces I could see something hopeful, even youthful as they watched in a fuzzy, faraway screen their grandson holding a bottle in two hands. It was tilted the wrong way, so no milk flowed into his mouth, but who cares about physics when you’ve a grip like a Burmese python?

As Fitzsimmons returned to work part-time and I took over the morning childcare, I learned to read his moods, rock him back to sleep at night and, most significantly, get him down for morning naps. Childless adults cannot imagine the satisfaction at being able to put your baby to sleep. Combine the euphoria of learning to ride a bike with the buzz of your first paycheck and you’re still not close. Every morning I’d put him in the BabyBjörn sling, read to him for a few minutes, then switch on Rockabye Beatles, a kids CD in which xylophones replaced lyrics. When he fell asleep between “Strawberry Fields” and “Yellow Submarine,” I felt like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Throughout the long months of June and July, Sam and I would leave the apartment before Fitzsimmons awoke, escaping into the early morning mist that hung on the slopes of Russian Hill. San Francisco was beautiful. Pale wood-framed buildings lit by the pinkening sun, Fort Mason a limpid green, the bay an icy blue. Sometimes parakeets would flutter over our heads toward Telegraph Hill. In the evenings, Fitzsimmons would put our son to sleep, then as the sun set beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, the two of us would share dinner, hot. As our horizons expanded, so did the sense that this wasn’t just possible, it might even be fun.

As Sam approaches the 6-month mark, we’re still struggling: to sleep, to feed, to adjust to his new developments. His sudden puking still reminds me of John Hurt in “Alien.” He still wakes up four times a night. And every morning it still hurts Fitzsimmons to leave for work.

But I’m hopeful. Parenting is not simply two steps forward, one step back — it’s also a trip and a stumble, a silly and awkward waltz. My son smiles now when he sees me (poor sod), shrieks with laughter when tickled or when Fitzsimmons jumps up and down. He’s growing — and so am I. 

Simon Hodgson was born in Scotland and lives in San Francisco. He is a writer, editor, and dad. He has written for Daddy Dialectic, Education.com, Urban Sprig, NW Kids magazine, and Parent USA City.

“He wants you to come down,” I say. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” he asks.

“For one thing, I’m a Democrat.”

“So?” Lee’s son died near my husband in the towers. Our politics are so far apart I am amazed we’ve managed to put our opinions aside for the sake of the organization and all the family members we advocate for. “C’mon, kiddo. Do it for Vig,” Lee insists. “Vig” is Lee’s good friend John Viggiano who lost two sons on September 11, one a police officer, the other a firefighter. I remember meeting his wife at one of the many funerals. Her expression was limp with grief, a shade pulled down.

“I can’t, Lee. I can’t pretend to like those people,” I say.

“C’mon. They’re having a nice dinner to honor John, and they’re showing the short film they made about one of his sons. His whole family.”

I sigh, picturing Lee’s weathered, olive brow, his small brown eyes squinting expectantly on the other end of the line. “I have Aidan …”

“C’mon. Call your mother-in-law to watch him, pack a fancy dress and I’ll see you on Wednesday.” The other end goes silent.

Twenty-seven hours later, I am with Lee, teetering in baby blue satin heels through an elaborate security system on the East Wing. We’d stopped at my friend Mila’s apartment on Dupont Circle to change and now we are at least a half an hour late.

“I can’t believe I’m going braless to the White House,” I mumble to Lee as we wait in line. Lee and Mila had convinced me to forgo the conservative black dress and wear the sparkling blue floor-length gown I wore to my sister’s wedding. I am deeply regretting my choice since I have recently arrived at the age where I practically wear a bra to sleep.

A young, blond intern in a dull gray suit leads us to the Rose Garden, where cocktail hour is almost over. In my heels, I am nearly a foot taller than Lee who dons his Class A firefighter uniform that bears numerous citations and medals he received during his career and military service in the Vietnam War.

We pass a long hallway where oil paintings of former presidents and first ladies line the halls. I take in the white painted walls and the understated grandeur of the rooms we pass until I hear the muted voices of a gathering getting louder. The hall opens up into a wide foyer that faces the Rose Garden. I stop in my tracks. A small gathering stands on the patio in small clusters. I recognize Carl Rove, Condoleezza Rice and Maury Povich. Maury Povich? What the hell is he doing here?

Everyone is wearing business attire.

Lee takes my elbow to make an entrance but I yank my arm away, trying not to panic.

“Lee! You told me this was formal!” I whisper angrily, staring at the sea of dark suits. George Bush Sr. is leaning on a door at the entrance to the garden, looking at us.

“I thought it was,” he says with a shrug, chuckling at my reaction.

“It’s not funny, Lee. I’m going home,” I say, turning to leave, but he tugs on my elbow and pulls me back.

“Oh, c’mon. You look beautiful,” he says patronizingly.

“I look like your whore,” I whisper and Lee shakes his head.

“Welcome. Welcome,” Bush Sr. says, walking over to greet us with a wide smile. I feel my cheeks burn, and I pull my blue satin wrap rightly around myself. Lee introduces us and I plaster on a smile, wishing I could crawl under a rock, or better yet, my covers at home, soft and dark.

George Bush Sr. is talking to Lee about turning 80, about wanting to jump out of an airplane as a birthday present to himself. He looks much younger than he does on television, his eyes a vibrant and piercing blue, and I can’t help but notice that he seems as much an outsider as I do, hovering by the door and never speaking to his son.

I follow Lee into the garden, feeling like a gaudy eyesore among the sea of dark suits when Lee spots John Viggiano and they fall into a hearty hug, smacking each other on their backs. John is in his Class A uniform too, his cheeks drooped with sadness.

I excuse myself, grabbing a glass of white wine off one of the trays being passed. I play with Sport on the lawn, rubbing his soft belly on the perfectly groomed grass. I notice the Secret Service is eyeing me, hovering on the patio and talking into their lapels. “The whore in the blue dress is playing with the first dog,” I imagine them saying.

When dinner is finally announced, I practically run to the foyer where a buffet has been set up. I am first in line and quickly help myself to poached salmon, asparagus and salad. As I walk back outside, I just wish this night would be over. I can’t wait to peek in on Aidan sleeping, his long lashes fluttering in his sleep like wind on grass. I will have to wake him early tomorrow for the service in Park Slope and then we will head over to Green-Wood Cemetery to put flowers on Dave’s grave.

Balancing my plate and wine glass, I find a table on the farthest end of the patio, next to a long hedgerow and hide there, letting my thoughts drift with the warm breeze, barely tasting the brine of my salmon.

“Is someone sitting here?” I hear a voice say. I look up to see Donald Rumsfeld and his wife smiling stiffly.

“No. Go ahead,” I say, shifting in my chair to make room at the small cocktail table. They carefully place their plates and sit in the metal chairs that scrape loudly on the slate.

“I’m Joyce,” the wife says, twisting toward me and extending a hand.

“Marian,” I say, shaking it. Joyce is pretty, or holds the shape of someone that used to be, her face and high cheekbones softened a bit, her blond hair not overly coiffed like most women her age, but falling in gentle curls around her face.

“Donald,” the voice across from me says, his glasses reflecting the remaining light.

“There you are!” Lee says, sitting in the last empty seat. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“This is Lee,” I say making the introductions. Rumsfeld notices Lee’s pins and they immediately fall into war talk. Joyce is telling me about her daughter, who loves rock climbing, and I am distracted, one ear poised on Rumsfeld, who is telling Lee that he just returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. Joyce notices this and gracefully joins the conversation with the men. Rumsfeld is talking about the pride he has in “his men.” Lee agrees, taking a sip of his wine and I stare at my plate, my cheeks on fire.

“What do you think, Marian?” Rumsfeld says, looking at me, his blue eyes small and sharp behind his glasses.

“Me?” I feel Lee kick me under the table. I know he doesn’t want me to answer. “You don’t want to know what I think,” I say, smiling, reminding myself that I am here for Lee and John. Lee seems pleased with my response, but Rumsfeld persists.

“No. I am curious,” he continues. I look over at Lee who must be squirming as much as I am. I swallow my bite of fish.

“I think this administration used the death of my husband to go into a country we have no business being in,” I say, stopping myself from saying more. A long uncomfortable silence lands in the center of the table.

Joyce clears her throat and suddenly asks me about my late husband. I dig into my purse and procure the wake card I keep in my wallet from Dave’s memorial. There is a photo on the back. The one Dave liked best of himself dangling from a rope rescue drill high above the city.

“So handsome,” Joyce says, simply handing the card to her husband, who studies the photo in silence. Lee offers up his own wake card of his son Jonathan, who looks like a younger version of Lee, smiling in bunker gear.

“Dave and Jonathan were found a few feet from each other,” Lee says. “And we didn’t know each other before.”

A young man in a suit asks everyone to head into the screening room across the hall. I had forgotten all about the short film and am momentarily confused. Rumsfeld hands me back my card.

“Keep it,” I say, as if it would make a difference. Lee puts his hand on my back and leads me inside where a receiving line to meet the president and his wife has formed.

When it is our turn, Lee introduces himself and mentions our organization. “And this is Marian. She founded the organization. She lost her husband, Dave. It’s also her wedding anniversary,” he says.

The president takes my hand and shakes his head, his small eyes squinting at me. “You got the double whammy,” he says in his Texan drawl. I don’t know what to say to this, so I just stand there, a strange half smile on my face. “You know my wife,”" he says moving on to the next guests.

“Yes, hi Libby,” I say, taking her hand, which is surprisingly soft.

“Laura,” she corrects, her face never changing expression.

“Did you just call her Libby?” Lee whispers as I follow him into a small screening room with about 10 rows, five seats across. Lee shimmies down the second row and sits in the seat closest to the wall. I sit next to him, enjoying the plush red softness of the seat. I try not to look around but in my periphery I notice that Condoleezza Rice has taken the seat next to mine. “Do me a favor and don’t say anything,” Lee jokes. I roll my eyes and check my cell phone. It is 8:30. I would be tucking Aidan into bed now, reading the next chapter of “The Chronicles of Narnia” while he fidgets under the sheets.

When everyone is seated, a young man in a suit pulls a thick curtain across the doors we entered from. Secret Service officers stand along the back wall, their arms folded in front of themselves. President Bush stands up to introduce the film “Twin Towers,” a short documentary that won an Academy Award. It is about an elite squad in the Police Department, the one that John Viggiano’s son was in.

The president is surprisingly awkward, looking more like a 12-year-old giving an oral report than the leader of the Free World. He rubs the back of his leg with one shoe, a habit I noticed at the State of the Union last year. He finally sits next to Laura in the two largest seats in the front row.

The room darkens and the giant screen lights up with footage of the morning of September 11. The camera is shaking, pointed skyward, debris tumbling toward the lens that shows one of the towers on fire. There are firefighters running past, rumbling and chaos, people screaming and smoke. It is a scene of carnage so familiar and surreal, I feel as distant from it as I do from this group of people I am watching it with. Then, like a wave of nausea I know the collapse is coming. This is the moment Dave died. The bass from the speakers vibrates in my stomach, and I am suddenly crying. Not a normal cry, but a hysterical cry that feels like an epileptic seizure of grief. I feel Lee looking at me shocked. In all our time together, I have rarely cried in public, and I am equally stunned by the moaning wail that is coming from my chest, making it hard to breathe. I am suddenly standing, gasping for air. I need to get out of the room. Panicked, I clumsily, climb to the end of my row, stepping on Condoleezza Rice’s foot along the way.

I feel everyone watching me as I try to find the door, but the curtain seems to have no opening and I frantically pull the fabric, looking for the seam. I can see the Secret Service men moving down the steps toward me: “The whore in the blue dress is on the move,” I imagine them saying, and then Lee appears behind me, reaching across and finding the door.

In the echoing hall, I don’t recognize the hysterical woman I have become. I can’t stop crying and the Secret Service men are following a few steps behind me like I am an angry animal that needs to be captured.

“Leave me alone!” I snarl at them and then Lee is beside me, his hand landing gently on my back.

“Can you give her some air, please?” he says, and the footsteps behind me suddenly stop. “Is there a bathroom she can use?” he asks someone else, and then the intern with a gray suit appears and we follow her down a long corridor. Everything is blurred from my tears, and Lee guides me down the hall, his hand like a life preserver on my back.

Finally, we enter a small library and a door shuts behind us. I watch the intern walk over to a wall, and like an episode from “Scooby Doo,” she pulls the wall of books open to reveal a closet-sized bathroom. I practically run inside, closing the door behind me. I plop down on the closed toilet lid taking in the room that feels like my own padded cell, dark and comforting. Tears fall out in thick drops leaving small wet stains on my blue dress. The crying makes me feel heavy, as if each gulp of air contains metal.

“Marian, are you OK?” Lee asks, his voice muffled behind the door.

“I’ll be right out,” I say, my breath slowly returning. I stand up slowly, splash cold water on my face, wiping my smeared makeup off with a thick white handcloth with the presidential seal.

“I am so sorry Lee,” I say, finally exiting the bathroom. Lee stands looking concerned; the intern is on her cell pacing the carpeted room.

“Don’t apologize,” Lee says softly, and I am reminded of how many times over these last two years that we have watched each other cry, sharing the weight of our losses.

“If you want to go back in, I’ll be fine.” I say sniffling.

“No, no, no, ” he says, swatting the air. “I couldn’t think of a better impression to leave with them,” he says smiling, his hand returning to my back as the intern shows us the door to leave, and we walk into the warm Washington night. 

Marian Fontana is the author of the bestselling memoir “A Widow’s Walk,” and founder of the 9-11 Families Association.

He waited for more, but got nothing. Finally: “Mom, why aren’t those two towers there anymore?”

“There was … a couple of years before you were born … it’s hard to…”

Awkward silence filled the car. “Wait,” he said. “What?”

My response, just two words, made me ashamed of myself.

“It’s complicated.”

Seven years into motherhood, I thought the hardest questions were behind me. My son knows I was married to someone else before I met his dad. He knows that his elderly and fragile grandparents may not live too many more years. He knows there is no Santa Claus and likes being in on the joke. And our conversation about how babies are made wasn’t awkward — because he’s not old enough to realize it could be.

It’s the one piece of parenting I was sure I had down: My kid asks me something and, no matter how difficult the subject, I answer on the spot with honesty leavened by tact.

Or, at least, I thought I did.

“It’s complicated.” That was the best I could do? We pulled into the supermarket parking lot in our Pittsburgh suburb, and I told him we were running late and needed to hurry. Neither of us said anything for the next few minutes. So much for being the mom who tackles the tough stuff.

In 2001, parents around the country were faced with explaining the events of 9/11 to children in real time, when the pain was fresh and images of destruction were everywhere. But for those of us who didn’t become parents until years later, when the attacks were already our history rather than our present, it’s been a different challenge.

In New York City and its suburbs, many schools observe the anniversary. Some neighborhoods have public memorials honoring residents who died and local news coverage often features the ongoing story of Ground Zero. Families throughout the region lost loved ones, so for kids in many households the subject isn’t so much revealed as it is explained gradually.

A friend I grew up with on Long Island, who is now raising her own kids there, introduced the subject in stages. “Kaitlyn was only 3 months old when it happened, so I told her about it when she was 4,” says Andrea Cappelli Redican. “She asked about it since it was on the news, and I told her that some ‘bullies’ from another country didn’t like us and tried to start a fight. She was only 4, so I tried to lessen the blow. Now she knows the whole truth, about the terrorists, training and the rest.”

I asked a friend in Massachusetts, Michael Bird, whether he’d discussed it with his 7-year-old daughter. “Not yet,” he wrote to me. “It’s not that we’ve been deliberately avoiding it – it just hasn’t come up. I plan to be honest when the time comes, but who knows what the circumstances will be that start the conversation?”

In the Pittsburgh area, some schools commemorate the day but others don’t mention the subject at all. Some wait to introduce it until well into middle school. My son started second grade last week, and his teacher doesn’t plan to make any reference to the anniversary.

As Mary Kay Delaney, chair of the education department at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., explains, “So many parents handle this differently from each other. The teacher’s job is to respect the role of the parents … but also to make a safe place for children to ask questions and speak. So when you’re talking about introducing this into a class, you have to think about respecting lots of family boundaries.”

Delaney continues, “I think the role of a teacher with her elementary students can be to communicate with parents that this is coming up and ‘we’re going to talk about it in the classroom in this way, and I wanted to let you have a chance to talk about it with your child.’”

I hadn’t planned in advance to keep this from my son. I am a New Yorker by birth, and the events of that day changed the trajectory of my life, as they did for so many people. If anything, I figured someday I’d introduce it in detail.

But my policy of answering his questions as soon as they crop up is not just about giving him facts. It’s about context as well. I explain what complicated things mean and how they might impact him. I can do that with thorny subjects like sex, death or racism because I have a clear sense of what I know and believe. Sept. 11 is something I’m still grappling with. That makes it much more of a challenge – and more intimidating – to translate it for someone so young. Knowledge, my father-in-law has always said, can make a bloody entrance.

I had no idea how to tell a first-grader that a handful of men doomed two colossal buildings in an instant, killing thousands of people using ordinary airplanes, and I can’t say for sure what that means for our future. So I said nothing.

The subject didn’t come up again for a month. Then, one night before bed, he asked why it said “In Memory of 9/11/01″ on the New York Fire Department sweatshirt I was wearing. I was uncomfortable, and I probably sounded grumpy when I responded. “Have you packed your bag for school tomorrow?”

He stared at me, then went hunting for his backpack. Again, I had copped out.

We like to think that the choices we make give us some measure of control in raising healthy, resilient children. But as with protecting ourselves from terrorism, control can be pretty much an illusion. In the end, we know almost nothing about how events and information will germinate inside our kids.

On one of my son’s last days of school in June, I was ready when he got off the bus. As he walked up the driveway, I was trying hard not to be awkward or nervous. Which meant, of course, that I was completely awkward and nervous.

I was equipped with visual aids — images and news reports I’d curated to tell the story honestly but in a way that was manageable to a first-grader. Pictures of the towers with smoke coming out the top, but no falling bodies. Pictures of firefighters, but none of the airplanes hitting.

I told him about the men and the planes. And I told him that after nearly nine years, nothing like this has happened again.

“How can a plane blow up a building?” he asked. I started explaining that jet fuel can explode and create a fireball. His eyes were huge. Great, I thought, now he’s probably terrified that the gas station will blow up the next time we fill my tank. I started talking about the heroic firefighters, including one who was an old friend of mine.

Despite my faltering when it first came up, I still know this much: I don’t want to become a parent who shuts out reality. My house will never be a cocoon where the flow of information and inquiry is stifled. And I think it’s logistically impossible to censor things the way parents could back in the pre-digital world.

Sept. 11 is the granddaddy of disturbing news events. But leaving something this world-changing for others to explain seems to me as ill-advised as dodging the subject of sex and assuming kids will learn what they need to know from TV and their friends.

And so, as I finally sat down with my son, I steeled myself to give clear explanations to questions that, even today, seem unanswerable.

Our conversation lasted only a couple minutes. Then my first-grader looked up at me. “Can I have a snack?” Cereal bar in hand, he walked down the hall to watch “Arthur” on PBS. I sat at the kitchen table alone, wondering whether I’d screwed up and realizing I wouldn’t know for years, if ever.

Later, as he got ready for bed, he said quietly, “I’m sorry for your friends who died.”

And there it was: the payoff. I had told a 7-year-old about people who hated, and who killed because they hated. I had told him that the world changed, and that many people had died. Knowledge doesn’t always make a bloody entrance. What I got back that day, in a small voice spoken in a little boy’s bedroom in a middle American suburb, was compassion.