2002-09-11 - 11:38 p.m.
The day.
The day that brings it all back.
The day dawns like I remembered, a year ago. Darker now in the early morning, a hint of coolness beginning to creep into the air. I am getting dressed, thinking about my busy day at work. Today I fasten a tiny Statue of Liberty pin to my shirt.
On my way to work I hear a crashing noise as I drive by the block where they are tearing down houses to make way for the development. The buildings are crushed into piles of rubble. The sight of it is disturbing. I've tried to imagine what it must have been like-- there, then-- and I know I can't.
I drive past the University's twin apartment buildings, each eleven stories high, towering over the campus. And I look up and imagine, as I do almost every day, what if they were ten times that tall. What if they came crashing down?
At work, I get e-mail that makes jokes about Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. And one that asks me to create a little virtual character and make her holding hands with other virtual characters around the virtual world. It's silly, but I do it anyway.
Some people in my work place are wearing red, white and blue, and some are wearing little flag stickers. It is a busy day. I take part in interviewing someone for a job, have a hurried lunch with coworkers, and rush off to a computer training seminar.
After the seminar, we drive back to the office. The two guys--our programmer, and my administrative assistant-- rush back inside, intent on work. The other woman, Mindy, (my friend who will soon be leaving) looked at me and said, "I just can't go back to work this afternoon!" And I, of course, was in complete agreement.
"Let's go get some ice cream!"
She turned the big truck she was driving around and gunned it out of the employee parking lot, and, giggling like a couple of high school girls cutting school, we headed for the nearest Baskin Robbins. We got ice cream cones, and sat on a bench on the sidewalk in the sun. In the warm fall sun, on this amazingly beautiful day. Talking, and laughing and eating our ice cream. And I kept thinking how much fun it was, just that silly happy hour we spent, AWOL from work. Thinking about how much I am going to miss her. Thinking about all the people whose favorite coworkers are gone forever.
We haven't watched TV all summer, and I think I have felt better for focusing my energies elsewhere. But I turned it on yesterday. And the news was full of warnings and threats, high alerts, missles, armed guards. I remembered how much fear can be generated by the media. In the back of my mind, the warnings lurked, like stalkers, waiting to catch me off guard. I try not to let them in.
Tonight we sat out on the porch for a few minutes, enjoying the cool evening. The sound of a trumpet drifted from down the block. Someone was playing Taps. Over and over again.
This....was the day.
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I may be alone in this, but I don't think it matters how any of this affects me. I had the same reaction as almost every other American a year ago: outrage, grief, depression. But as the year has progressed, and we have been inundated with media coverage of every detail of anything even remotely connected with 9-11, I realize that I can never understand what these people went through. I feel I should do my part by respectfully standing back. I don't begrudge or deny any person who suffered directly or indirectly from those horrible events all the grief and anger they may feel. But for the rest of us, who don't even know anyone who was there, is this unearned emotion? I have grieved along with the rest of America, but I also feel exploited. I didn't want to get tired of hearing about it-- it is too important. I want to remember what happened, but I don't want to see any more TV programs designed to make me cry.
I think the only meaningful thing we can do, in this newly altered and freaked out world, is to try to live without fear. Actually that was hard enough in the old world. But we have added fears now, and they are not unfounded. Still, this is the price that life extracts from us. The challenge to having a fearless relationship with life is resisting the influence of the media, always feeding us horror, always reminding us how much we have to be afraid of.
Turn off the TV. Keep memory sacred. Live without fear.
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