I’m not really the type to write a blog post about how much I like my friends. First, as you all know, I’m not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. I’m pretty logical. And logic tells me that you all KNOW that I like my friends, because if I 9/didn’t I…well…wouldn’t be friends with them.
But last night, I wrote a short post referring back to my pre-9/11 post last year. That post was all about how sad it was to me that the one positive thing we’d gained from 9/11 had been so quickly lost. In the immediate wake of 9/11, everyone was nice to everyone else and people donated whatever they had and those who were near to the scene reached out in any way they could. Perhaps my view was a little different because of my religion, but in that moment I saw the closest thing I’d ever seen to the world I believe God made—a world in which we were “one body”. And despite the terrible tragedy that inspired it, it was a beautiful, hopeful, affirming thing to watch and to be a part of.
And then we moved on.
Eight years later, we remember the tragedy. We remember the anger, and maybe the fear. We mourn for those lost and maybe even for the sense of security lost, but we don’t seem to remember that we discovered that we were all one people, in this thing together.
While I was lamenting the loss of that feeling and wonderingly vainly and naively (ever notice how close those two words are) why we couldn’t live that way every day, I suddenly thought about my friend Barb Cooper. Because Barb is that person every single day of her life.
You may know this already, because you may read her very popular blog, So, The Thing Is… Barb’s blog is, in a funny, non-preachy, self-deprecating kind of way, all about love: loving her family, her friends, her neighbors, her babysitter, the postman, and the stray cat peeking around the side of the house. Offering them her heart, willing their best good, and greeting every problem with an earnest, “Gosh, how can I help?” It’s an added bonus that she makes us laugh out loud in the process.
She’s a wonderful friend to me every day, but on this sad day, she’s more. As I contemplate the way most of us have drawn back into our shells and reverted to “me and mine” thinking, she’s an inspiration, and a point of hope. They may be few and far between, but there are people out there who live every day as we all should be…and maybe in a quiet, simple way, they’ll be the seeds of sustained change in a way that a national tragedy couldn’t.
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Faded Memories
Earlier this evening, I re-read the post that I wrote on the eve of September 11 last year and realized that what I see as the most important message surrounding that day hasn't changed. I wish that weren't the case, because when I wrote that post last year it was with a deep sense of having--as a society--dropped the ball. September 11 was undoubtedly the most powerful message this country has ever received...and we couldn't hold on to it for even a handful of years. That may be sadder than all of the raw tragedy and loss that occurred on that day. It will certainly have further-reaching effects.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
So, Tomorrow is September 11...
...and I forgot.
6 years, 364 days and 10 hours ago, I was sitting at my computer in a small town in Illinois, looking in disbelief at video of the smoldering first tower and not really yet entertaining the possibility that someone I knew had ceased to exist. She wasn't a close friend, just someone I knew from a common activity, part of a small group I exchanged emails with. The emails were usually light, sometimes snarky, almost always funny. The last email I'd received from her, though, had been different. Although young, she was a very accomplished professional woman. In that last email, just a day or two before, she'd mentioned that she was considering leaving her job to have a child.
So, on the morning of September 11, when I dashed off an email that said nothing more than, "Are you okay? Please respond so we know you're safe", I really hadn't absorbed the possibility that she might not be.
That seems insane in retrospect, given the images we were seeing, but it was somehow too much to take in. Too much to process on the scale that it was happening, and too much to narrow to a single flesh and blood woman halfway across the country from me.
Of course, as the hours and then days wore on, reality dawned...but it dawned slowly.
My daughter was five, and in afternoon kindergarten. What I remember most clearly from that day is her speaking into her yellow plastic toy phone, saying to some imaginary person on the other end, "I'm not sure if I'm going to school. There seem to be bombs everywhere." I turned off the television, but apparently it didn't help: what my daughter thinks she remembers from that day is me sitting on the bathroom floor crying. But that didn't happen that day. It happened two days later when the quick "are you okay?" email I'd dashed off bounced back with "permanant fatal errors". It's all blended in her mind, as one event, and perhaps it should be. It was a strange time when the normal parameters of life seemed not to apply.
But tonight was Parent Night at my daughter's school, and her Social Studies teacher mentioned that they'd be talking about 9/11 tomorrow, and my blood ran colder than it has on any of the years when I've been conscious of the date...because I forgot.
That's what we do, as humans. We move on. It's healthy, in a way, but in another way we lose something when we do. We've lost the spirit of togetherness, of being human together, of things like money and power and having the right job or the right car or whose kid made the cheerleading squad just NOT MEANING ANYTHING. Now, in the shadow of the upcoming Presidential election, we're as divided as we've ever been. The phrase "how is that my problem?" appears in a lot of discussions about economic crises and medical coverage and a hundred other issues that impact the day-to-day lives of people around us. We've forgotten.
And that is, perhaps, the biggest tragedy of 9/11. Because in the wake of disaster, it was very clear to all of us how it was our problem, how we were all in it together and every lost or injured or widowed or orphaned person was one of us. If we've lost that, we've let go of the one good, human thing that came out of that day and chosen to remain in the ruins.
6 years, 364 days and 10 hours ago, I was sitting at my computer in a small town in Illinois, looking in disbelief at video of the smoldering first tower and not really yet entertaining the possibility that someone I knew had ceased to exist. She wasn't a close friend, just someone I knew from a common activity, part of a small group I exchanged emails with. The emails were usually light, sometimes snarky, almost always funny. The last email I'd received from her, though, had been different. Although young, she was a very accomplished professional woman. In that last email, just a day or two before, she'd mentioned that she was considering leaving her job to have a child.
So, on the morning of September 11, when I dashed off an email that said nothing more than, "Are you okay? Please respond so we know you're safe", I really hadn't absorbed the possibility that she might not be.
That seems insane in retrospect, given the images we were seeing, but it was somehow too much to take in. Too much to process on the scale that it was happening, and too much to narrow to a single flesh and blood woman halfway across the country from me.
Of course, as the hours and then days wore on, reality dawned...but it dawned slowly.
My daughter was five, and in afternoon kindergarten. What I remember most clearly from that day is her speaking into her yellow plastic toy phone, saying to some imaginary person on the other end, "I'm not sure if I'm going to school. There seem to be bombs everywhere." I turned off the television, but apparently it didn't help: what my daughter thinks she remembers from that day is me sitting on the bathroom floor crying. But that didn't happen that day. It happened two days later when the quick "are you okay?" email I'd dashed off bounced back with "permanant fatal errors". It's all blended in her mind, as one event, and perhaps it should be. It was a strange time when the normal parameters of life seemed not to apply.
But tonight was Parent Night at my daughter's school, and her Social Studies teacher mentioned that they'd be talking about 9/11 tomorrow, and my blood ran colder than it has on any of the years when I've been conscious of the date...because I forgot.
That's what we do, as humans. We move on. It's healthy, in a way, but in another way we lose something when we do. We've lost the spirit of togetherness, of being human together, of things like money and power and having the right job or the right car or whose kid made the cheerleading squad just NOT MEANING ANYTHING. Now, in the shadow of the upcoming Presidential election, we're as divided as we've ever been. The phrase "how is that my problem?" appears in a lot of discussions about economic crises and medical coverage and a hundred other issues that impact the day-to-day lives of people around us. We've forgotten.
And that is, perhaps, the biggest tragedy of 9/11. Because in the wake of disaster, it was very clear to all of us how it was our problem, how we were all in it together and every lost or injured or widowed or orphaned person was one of us. If we've lost that, we've let go of the one good, human thing that came out of that day and chosen to remain in the ruins.
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