God. Has it been two

God. Has it been two years already? It’s stunning, actually, to
realize, when thinking about that horrible day that time will always
and forever march on. That it will always recede further into the past.
Perhaps I’m naïve to forever be shocked when the big picture of the
human experience presents itself to me, but I don’t think I’m alone
on this one. This feeling I have, this big huh? how did that happen?
moment must be akin to what parents feel when their children grow up
and move out of the house. A lifetime gone---poof---in what seems was
the blink of an eye. It’s somewhat bittersweet in actuality. That day
was one of the worst I’ll ever go through, and while nothing horrible
happened to me or my loved ones I don’t want to ever let it go. Time,
the contrary beast that it is, however, has marched on, as it should
and is meant to do---that is time’s purpose and it will never be
deterred. The images, the anger, the grief, the unspeakable horror of
that day are starting to fade; and as much as I don’t want it to, the
fabric of that day is starting to fray around the edges. “Memories are meant to fade. They’re designed that way for a reason.” --Mace, Strange Days
It’s time to write some of this stuff down otherwise I will lose it
completely. Indian Summer. I think that’s what I will always remember
most about 9/11/01 in the Twin Cities. My God, was the sky ever blue
that day, and not a single cloud available to mar it: that crystal
clear, retina jarring, cornflower blue that those of us lucky enough to
live in the Midwest are able to enjoy when the heat and humidity of
summer has cleared out. A sky so blue it hurts your eyes when you angle
your head upwards and gaze at it. It had been a normal day for the
husband and me. We had risen before the sun and had walked through the
neighborhood. When we arrived back at home, the husband and I scrambled
for the last cup of coffee (he won) and we logged onto our computers,
following the prescribed morning ritual before he had to pop into the
shower and then shoot off to work at a company that no longer exists.
My schedule for the day was full: laundry and then off to the mall on
the bus to pick up my new glasses. The store had called the previous
day as I was frying chicken for that evening’s supper, informing me
that my new specs were finally ready to be picked up. I was relieved.
My prescription had changed and my old glasses were giving me
headaches, something I’m not generally prone to, so the mall, no
matter how I despise the place, was definitely
on the agenda for the day. I was completely ready, at that point in
time, to get into the new-glasses-headache phase, instead of dealing
with the old-glasses-headache phase. At least there was some light at
the end of the tunnel in that scenario. This trip to the mall was
convenient for my friend, Mel, who lived in London at the time. She’d
asked a favor of me in an email: if there was still a Bombay Company in
the mall, could I please check out this little elephant statue she was
thinking of buying her boyfriend as a going-away present, as she needed
to know if it was worth seventy bucks? The Font of Bliss was off to
Thailand in a few weeks for a few months of head sorting while walking
on the beach. I emailed her back in that “how handy is this for
you?” sort of tone and said I’d let her know what it was like
tomorrow, the time change being what it is between London and
Minneapolis. I surfed. The husband showered, then left for work, his
lunch in his hand, and then I went down to the garage to deal with a
rather nasty mess a raccoon had left for me. When I was finally done I
went upstairs and hopped into the shower, ready to shoot off to the
mall to get my new glasses as soon as I’d washed the stink off. When
I was getting out of the shower, the phone rang and I ran to grab it.
With water dripping, I answered; knowing it was probably the husband
with something he’d forgotten to tell me before he’d left. That was
common. And it was the husband, but instead of his usual, lighthearted
yet businesslike tone, there was something very, very grave in his
voice. “Turn on the TV, Kathy. A plane’s just flown into the World
Trade Center.” “What? Was it an accident?” I asked, draping the
towel around me as best I could while running into the living room. “I don’t think so.”

I’m not going to go into a detailed description of what precisely
did you do? how did you react? who did you call? what network were you
watching? sort of thing. A few weeks ago we had some friends over for
drinks and dessert. A few cigars might have been smoked and with the
blackout only a few hours past the discussion turned to 9/11. Where were you that day?
We have recently added by marriage a new member into our close-knit
gourmand drinking and dining circle. We heard stories from L.A. These
were new, and yes, fascinating in their own right, because they added
the heretofore unknown factors of being on-staff at UCLA medical
center, the general proximity of the federal building to the hospital,
and concerns about a friend who was to be flying in from Newark later
that day. The story was new, but the emotions, the horror, the general
fucked-up-ed-ness of the situation was one we’d all heard before and
had experienced ourselves. This was a recent editorial decision for me.
I actually wrote it all down, but cut it. I ran a fine tooth comb
through my memory and pulled all of the memories into a cohesive,
compelling, description but it’s not really relevant unless you were
there, is it? I watched it on television. I was nowhere near NYC or DC.
I’ve never been to either of those places in my life; I have nothing
new to enter into the grandiose discussion of this subject. It’s been
said already. But boy oh boy was the television ever my crack dealer that
day, ever ready with a hit for my already jangled system. There was so
much news I couldn’t bear to turn the set off. But I had to. The
remote control was shot, and had been for quite some time. “Mute”
was not an option. My sister-in-law found the time to call when she’d
distracted her son with a Lion King video, while her daughter
took her mid-morning nap. They live over in Eagan, which is another
suburb here in the Twin Cities, and like so many other stay at home
moms that day, she had resorted to complete media blackout mode. Just
turning on the video for her had been a big decision, because she was
afraid her three-year-old son would see if the tape ran out and she
wasn’t there to turn the TV off. She was terrified he would see and
would ask questions. She wanted to know what was going on, but quickly
the questions started. She wanted to know why someone would do this to us? What had we done to deserve such a horrible thing?

I had no answers for her. Which was hard because she really wanted to know.
My sister-in-law has a babe-in-the-woods aura around her and everyone
in her family works to ensure that it stays in place. By this time, all
the suspicion was heading in the proper direction, although you could
tell that the media was hesitant to point their fingers incorrectly at
Islamic terrorists. How can they claim Islam is a peaceful religion?
the sister-in-law wanted to know. I tried to explain, if they were
Islamic, they were nutjobs. It’s that simple. The same as the
Christians who tried to free the Holy Land in the Crusades; the
absolute same as the Protestants in Northern Ireland who didn’t want
any Catholics mucking about Belfast. It’s the same.
No, it’s not, she replied calmly. Realizing I was not going to agree
with her, she switched to a different subject and we chatted a while
longer until my niece needed feeding, then we hung up. We’re very
lucky to live in the country that we do. I’d always felt it, but
until that day I had no idea of how absolutely, fucking lucky we were.
I’d never had my belief in the goodness of America shattered before.
I’m not Noam Chomsky or Susan Sontag. Nor am I a jingo. I knew
America wasn’t the best it could be, but I never said or believed it
was anything less than the best place on Earth to live. How can it not
be? Despite our flaws, you can do whatever here—you can worship the
god of your choice; you can be with whomever you want; you can say
whatever you want; you can do the work you want to do; you even can
pick your nose if you want to and fling the snot on a sidewalk, and as
long as you’re not breaking any laws you can get away with it. What a
place! You couldn’t ask for a better country. But I came awfully
close that day, I’ll admit, to having my belief shaken. We’re a
fair people. If something bad happens in your lifetime, well, chances
are you did something to bring it in. You need to figure out what the
problem was, find a solution, and keep it from happening again. I am
not a victim, nor did I think my country was, either. I kept waiting
for someone to say this. For someone to point a finger right back at
us. I kept waiting for the world to say, Well, you’ve meddled enough. Honestly, what did you expect? The air was pregnant with what was unsaid. Every moment that went by without the media saying the President of Oblivionland condemns this attack on the United States
was just one more moment that the absence of friends was all the more
noticeable and unbearable.
When you were in school, did you ever witness a fight between someone
who was popular and someone who wasn’t? Most of the time, the popular
kid would win easily. But there was always that one time when another
popular kid would step up for the nerd. You’d watch, stunned at the
shift in the geopolitics of grade school. That they’d not only
stepped up, but that they would beat the ever-living shit out of one of
their own. With awe, respect and a little more than your average amount
of surprise, you’d watch the crowd’s momentum shift with one good,
swift pop to the jaw. At that point in time, America wasn’t the popular kid; we
were the self-assured nerd who went about our business, not really
caring who we pissed off in the meanwhile. According to the other one
hundred, ninety-nine countries in the world, we had a president in
office who ranked just below idiot savant on the intelligence scale;
we’d dumped Kyoto and then we’d had the gall to bail on the ABM
treaty so we could develop that ridiculous missile defense system; the
dotcom backlash had already started and it was going worldwide on the
markets; Bush wasn’t doing diddly-squat to stop the most recent
intifada and in July Bush had taken a serious reaming at the G-8
meeting in Genoa. At that stage of the game we were damned if we did
and damned if we didn’t. If we looked after ourselves, we were seen
as protectionist assholes who were content to leave everyone else
behind. If we tried to look after the world, we were seen as
imperialist pigs who tried to tell everyone else what to do. People all
over the world were not charmed with America then; in fact, they were
royally pissed off at us. I knew it had to happen sometime that day,
that someone would say you deserved this.
The preceding political climate demanded it. I was waiting for it with
a cringe held in reserve for when it happened. I expected some politely
toned statement read by a talking head on TV which held no weight. They
would just be words after all, and would be easily dismissed and
slotted for future reference. Nothing, however, could have prepared me
for the pictures that came out of the West Bank that day. I was gutted
when I saw that footage of people dancing in the streets. I don’t
think I’ll ever forget the woman. In fact I know I won’t. Her face
is branded on my brain: a bespectacled, older woman in a chador, round
faced, smiling widely for the all world to see. She was jumping up and
down excitedly, clapping her hands in glee, like she’d won the
lottery, because the U.S. had finally paid for their support of Israel,
or so the announcer translated for her. We’d finally gotten ours and
she was happy about it. Never had I jumped up and down joyfully while a
Palestinian child was shot by an Israeli gun and yet however many of my people were feared dead at that point in time and she felt so good about it she did just that. I was gutted.
Just gutted. I wanted to vomit just to get the nasties out; like when
you’re drunk and you know the only way to make yourself feel better
is to stick your finger down your throat and just be done with it. But
miraculously the video feed changed. It switched to a very angry
Englishman who was all but shaking with outrage at what the hijackers
had done that day. I remember, as I listened to his words, vaguely
waiting for him to righteously slam his fist against the podium he
stood before. It never happened. He was too classy for that. But all it
took for me to regain my belief that America wasn’t the worst, but
indeed the best despite its flaws, was the willfully restrained fury of
an English Prime Minister. He delivered that good, swift pop to the jaw
I so needed to see.
I will never likely get the opportunity in my lifetime to thank Mr.
Blair in person for his support. He propped me up when my own President
was too busy dealing with the crisis at hand. He gave me the words I
needed to hear, he let me know we were not alone when it felt very much
like we were. But most of all I thank him for his anger. I thank him for being angry.
I’d been expecting the trite, politically correct sympathies of
nations who hated us, who in their heart of hearts were glad it was us
and not them; what I received instead was the fury of a good man who said in essence, we
will stand by you and to hell with any and all who say different. This
was wrong! I’ll be damned before I, or my country, deserts you in
your time of need.. I won’t say I thank him from the bottom of my
heart, because the heart is too trite an offering for a man like that.
Thanks need to be offered from the very depth of your being for
something of this magnitude. From the bottom of your soul
would be a better saying in this instance. And I mean it. I thank him
from the bottom of my soul for propping up what makes up a very large
portion of my soul: America, and all the riches, bounties,
opportunities, nightmares and horrors within. Mr. Blair allowed me to
access my anger; his anger made it all
right to do so and was so incredibly important on that Day of Days
because it helped to put some of the craziness into perspective. Before
he spoke I literally had no idea of what I was supposed to feel on that
day. I know what I did feel, but was that right? I didn’t
know. I was as confused and as jumbled as everyone else that day. I was
in my very comfortable apartment, smoking enough cigarettes to disgust
even Denis Leary, watching the world disintegrate before my eyes, yet,
by some cosmic alignment of predetermined location, I was far away
enough that it would never directly affect me. And I wanted it to directly affect me, so I would at least get a grip on the fury I felt; some justification
for the fury I finally had come around to. It wasn’t enough for
me---during that day---that just my country had been attacked; I needed
more, for some unknown reason. I wanted it to be personal for me and it
wasn’t. For the first time in my life, I had no sense of the scope. I
couldn’t predict what was going to happen with any certainty, and
that was odd. In 1989, I could have told you when that lone man played
chicken with the tank in Tiananmen Square, the hard liners would crack
down. When, later that same summer, Hungary opened its borders to
vacationing East Germans and allowed them to stay, I knew it was a
distinct possibility the wall would soon come down. I’ll admit, the
coup in the Soviet Union that eventually brought down the whole house
of cards slipped by me. But, hell, even the CIA didn’t predict that
one so I suppose I’m off the hook there. On that day, however, no one
had any idea of the scope, least of all me. We were too stunned to look
further with any sort of clarity. The day was like an old 35mm camera
whose aperture kept going wider and wider to let in more and more
light, the darker the ambient light became, forcing it to open further.
And that in itself was terrifying. The anger was understandable and
completely unsurprising in its ferocity when it made its appearance,
but the sorrow I felt that day was completely beyond my grasp. I so
badly wanted to weep for the loss of it all, but I didn’t. I
couldn’t bring myself to. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I
didn’t find the fact America had been attacked enough of a reason to
do so either. My tears weren’t justified: I was safe, my husband was
safe, my family was safe---we were all fine.
I had suffered no losses. Why the hell would it be all right for me,
someone who was safe in fly-over land, to start weeping uncontrollably
for losses I had not incurred? It was not my job to mourn: my job, it
became readily apparent as the afternoon and evening wore on, was to
live life in the fashion I had before 9/11. 9/12 needed to be the same
as 9/10 for me. The people who had lost family and friends in
the attacks seemed to quietly demand this of me because it was apparent
that’s what they would wish for their loved ones if they had the
chance. If they had been lucky enough to live in fly-over land, too. We
finally turned off the television and went to bed. My errands had gone
by the wayside. I had no new spectacles. The laundry had never gotten
done. The husband had cooked dinner, a pasta dish made with the
phony-baloney crab, and we’d eaten it as we’d watched the President
make a quick, yet dramatic change in American foreign policy.
Exhausted, we’d crawled in and the husband fell off into dreamland
quickly. He’s lucky that way: he can close his eyes and fall asleep.
I lay awake for a while, trying to come to some sort of agreement with
my brain, bargaining with it to try and not think of all I’d seen on
the TV that day just for a long enough period for me to fall asleep.
The negotiations with my brain, like some endless round of GATT talks,
were fruitless. It became readily apparent that sleep would happen when
it happened, not a moment before and there was no use fretting about
it. Our bed was right under a window and I could see the stars blurrily
winking at me as I gazed up from my pillow. It was quiet. So quiet. We
live right under the west-east flight path for Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport, and we’d gotten a lot of air traffic that
summer. It had been spectacularly noisy, but this day was proving to be
equally spectacular in its silence. No cars were on the streets; buses
were on a restricted service and all I could hear were cicadas and
crickets, until, I was roused by the roar of a jet engine. The
incongruity of it sent my heart leaping in my chest. The airport’s open! They’ve gotten the planes back up and running!
I slid out of bed and ran into the living room, quickly flipping on the
TV we’d just shut off a half-hour before and flipped around for
information, praying for just one small piece of good news so I could
sleep.
I was surprised to find none. I went to the computer and did the same.
I could find none. An idea struck, and I finally woke up the husband
for confirmation. “Listen. It’s a jet. What kind do you think it
is?” I asked, with a fair amount of dread in my heart, knowing a
certain type of jet’s arrival over the skies of Minneapolis
wouldn’t be announced to the general public…not just yet, anyway.
“It’s an F-16. Go back to sleep.” He kissed me, then rolled and
pulled me to him so we were curled up like a pair of spoons in a
silverware drawer. Eventually, I fell asleep, not really looking
forward to the next day. The world, indeed, was a very different place
that night. And it hasn’t gone back since.