I know this isn't directly related to the Pipsqueak, or to adoption... but it just looms too large in my life to allow the date to pass without mention.
Two decades has dulled the edge of some memories (although it remains sharp), and blurred others to the point where I'm no longer clear on exactly what happened. For example, I know I spoke with Mom on the phone a couple of times, but not when, or what we said; I don't remember if I spoke with Dad until later in the evening, or during the day. I remember driving to the local branch of my bank sometime after both towers had fallen and withdrawing a few hundred dollars in cash from my savings "just in case" while discussing the likelihood of another attack on the DC area with the teller... but I no longer remember how much, nor whether the teller was male or female, nor any part of the conversation other than our mutual wishes to "stay safe" as I left. I remember efforts to track down the many cousins still living in the NYC metro area, slowly checking off the list of names as being "safe" one by one, but I don't remember who called whom, nor how long it took, nor any of the discussions that took place. All those memories (and more) have been blurred, dulled, mixed, and faded by twenty years of life experiences.
It feels strange to realize that since that day, I have changed careers (not just jobs) at least twice, with almost every previous employer now either out of business entirely, bought up by & absorbed into another company, or staffed entirely by strangers; a surprising number of former colleagues and managers have died in that twenty-year period as well. I have owned four different vehicles (only one at a time), and have gone from renting out two rooms in my house to living alone; the long-ago-expected move to a different house, possibly a different region of the country, evaporated somewhere along the way. Halfway through that twenty-year stretch, the most important person in my life joined the family, many of our cousins married or divorced or became parents or grandparents (some several times over), members of the extended family have spread across the globe or died, and more recently we've had to helplessly do what (very little) we can while watching Dad slowly melt away.
Despite that, there are flashes of memory of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath that remain shockingly clear in my mind...
I still remember the "click" my stereo made when the timer turned it on (even then, a loud stereo was almost the only thing that would wake me up). The radio faded on to something like, "...approximately 18 minutes apart" and it took about a minute, maybe two, for me to figure out the DJ was talking about airliners crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
I still remember yelling, "TURN AROUND!" at the screen as a reporter talked to the camera, oblivious to the tower behind him beginning that slow, obscene drop almost straight down, leaving a ghost of itself in the smoke for a few moments before the winds blew it away.
I remember seeing one of the first up-close shots of Ground Zero on TV with some segments of the outer cladding of the towers sticking up from the rubble and thinking, "Oh, good, there are still a few floors left." I also remember the feeling in my stomach just moments later when the camera angle changed and I realized how far from the truth that thought had been.
I still remember posting an essay about my feelings on my personal web page (anybody remember those?), constantly updating the list of emergency services, locator services, shelter services, and information numbers as they became available over the next few weeks. (The HTML file is still on a dead backup drive I hope to someday send to a data recovery company; all I clearly remember of that essay is the paragraph where I mention the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill" and said that under the circumstances it was going to be necessary to diminish ourselves somewhat in an effort to find the perpetrators' support and eliminate it.)
I remember a conversation with one of my cousins sometime in October, when his answer to the usual "so what have you been up to?" was to tell me he'd attended the funeral of a friend of his who'd been on one of the planes.
I remember having to sit down and close my eyes for a few minutes when, early the next year, I was walking through Union Station in DC and came across an installation featuring part of the 9/11 wreckage. In retrospect, I'd never heard that part of the station so quiet before.
And I remember telling myself, year after year, every year, "Don't watch the replay. Don't watch the specials. Don't watch the memorial service." And how year after year, every year, I do anyway. Sometimes I even catch myself yelling at some group of long-gone firemen or police to go the other way when they go up the stairs. Sometimes I still catch myself telling someone to park their truck somewhere else.
And I still cry.
For Miriam, 9/11 is as much a part of history as the American Revolution. It's something that she hears about and people speak about, but twenty years in the past is as good as it happening on another planet. Her life, as are all our lives, is shaped by the events of that day in ways she may not be able to understand simply because she has no first-hand experience of just how different the "before" and "after" worlds are. She knows it's a day on which something really terrible and frightening and sad happened, and she's glad that none of the family were hurt... but her concerns are lie in the realm of which of her more drama-loving friends are involved in a love triangle (as if you can really have a love triangle in 7th grade), when the next lockdown drill will be held at school, who's going to get her to her next dance class or rehearsal, whether or not she has a fresh mask to wear in school, if her smartphone is fully charged and the "Find My" app is linked properly to Mommy's and Uncle Brian's and Grandma's, if the kid at the next table during lunch is coughing for real or on purpose, and how are Grandma & Grandpa doing today.
But as alien and distant and "historical" as 9/11 is for my niece... it still hurts. And I still remember.
Stay safe out there, and never forget to tell the people you love that you love them.
