Yesterday morning after 10 minutes of NPR, I turned off the radio and proceeded with the day. I don't do media coverage of horror. To me, it's self-inflicted emotional torture. All I need to know are the facts and see an image one time. Not watch it over and over ad nauseaum. An email from a friend indicated she was having trouble with her emotions that raw morning, the ten-year anniversary of 9-11. I sifted through my own emotions. I posted on "The Journey With Grace" here about peace–another's words that resonated with me. Facebook was full of "Where were you?" posts. But the urge and the words to put my recollections to virtual & cathartic paper came later, in the early afternoon. Like you, I remember well where I was when I first heard the news:
I had dropped Grace off at school–Gower Elementary–where she was in first grade, and drove to Star Bagel. They still had a satellite shop on Davidson Road then. People there were flustered and all a buzz talking to each other. I think it was the excited, bug-eyed clerk who said he had family in New York. He told me that something bizarre had happened there and he was worried about their safety.
I cannot remember who first gave me the actual news of what happened. But in the growing line of people behind me, from someone, I learned the unfathomable news of a plane flying into the trade towers. One woman's husband was a pilot. He had called her, she told us. His plane was grounded and so were all planes. I don't recall if it was from her, but somehow we learned about the second plane. We all shook our heads. Shocked. In disbelief.
I left the shop and proceeded to drive across town to a STEP (Support Training for Exceptional Parents,) meeting in a Brentwood clubhouse. En route I listened to the litany of sensationalized news and rumors on the radio. I cannot remember the name of the STEP meetings' leader. I liked her. She was in the class behind me in Partners for Policymaking Leadership. The meeting's attendees exchanged news of what we'd heard, whether we should proceed with our meeting, whether we should rush to our babies and gather them up and head for the safety and shelter of our homes.
The leader decided to begin her presentation and then stopped. We agreed we were all too distracted to meet, listen, to learn about anything but what was going on in our world gone uncertain. We turned on a television set there in the club house and watched a bit of the pandemonium. And then the leader decided to close us in prayer before we made our ways back to our respected burbs and to hold our sweet, special children. I had a sinking feeling. Quickly, knowing that the mother who'd hosted the meeting was Jewish, I asked that we be considerate and respectful of all faiths. Did anyone catch that? Did they understand what I was requesting? They didn't seem to hear me. And the leader proceeded to pray in the name of Jesus Christ….I suppose that my Jewish friend, living here in the South, was used to the insensitive presumption. Of course, our leader meant no harm. She was reaching, probably like the rest of us, clammering upward to grasp the reassuring hand of a God by some name. Some Divine-Healing Being-Beacon of Hope. For some sense of Faith in a world that. Suddenly. Made no sense.
We never rescheduled that meeting.
The image above is a bumper sticker that I proudly added to my tacky collection of too many upon the bumper of The Divorce Mobile. And there's yet another one I added recently that I've yet to tell you about. Sometime. I'll do.
