An Unfortunate Series of Events

Last year, at this time, I didn't have this blog. The year before that, I had nothing. The year before that, I forget what stopped me but I'd guess it was probably a misguided sense of propriety. Before then, I'm not even sure. But, for whatever reason, I've never had the opportunity to express my feelings on the anniversary of September 11th, the Day the Nation Stood Still. So, you'll forgive me if I try to sort through the conflicting emotion and baggage of that watershed day.

It's especially haunting this year because the anniversary falls on a Tuesday. Which was the day of the week that the towers originally fell. The day outside my window is overcast, it's rained only hours before, leaving the ground wet and the air heavy with precipitation just as it was six years ago. There is, there was a chill in the air as summer faded away into the crispness of fall. Just as it was when a symbol of American, of economic, might was destroyed in a grand redeclaration that we were under attack. When this:

Tumbled in a cloud of ashes and flames into this:

It's just spooky, really, how much today has played out like that fateful one so long ago. I keep expecting something to happen. Something awful. For that unexpected phone call to wake me from my reverie and into a world gone horrifically wrong.

That's, of course, how I found out in 2001. It's not a particularly interesting story, probably echoes the mundane experiences of so many others, but in September of 2001, I'd just finished with school. I was back in my hometown on the fringes of Detroit, puttering around, really at a loss for what to do with myself. I'd slept in that day, longer than I usually do, because I'd been tossing and turning the night before. I had no sense of warning, no special foresight, just the same vague anxieties that had been costing me sleep for months. But I had no real reason for being up at the crack of dawn, either. A meeting, an interview, something like that, later in the day, hooking up with my friends for another night on the town later that night, but nothing to rush about. My biggest plans, that morning, were about going to the Michigan game that Saturday with the tickets I'd bartered for with my sister. She'd given me her season package with their low, student price saving me from having to pay the newly raised alumni price and, in exchange, I did...something I can't remember for her in return. And I was going to visit the campus to pick those tickets up, wanted to take my sister who'd just started college out to lunch, needed to figure out where to park and who to bring and where to tailgate, and had a dozen other ordinary concerns that were about to be seared away in the ashcloud.

For some reason, as I went about my wake-up routine, prepared myself to head out into the day, I hadn't turned on the news. Which was unusual for me since at the time, I was a voracious consumer of the news media. So a day that started without CNN or NPR and instead in a deafening silence only broken by the crunch of my cereal was an unusual one. I found out thanks to a frantic call from my mother, asking me if I was okay. Asking me if I had seen the news yet in response to my confusion. She worked downtown, even then, in one of the larger buildings. One that would be a dwarf in Manhattan skyline but on that day, as that panic gripped us, as we all turned towards the skies, nothing seemed safe. It hadn't been evacuated yet, that would come later, but already the work day had ground to a halt. Radios, televisions had been turned on and the entire building was no doubt riveted. In the background, I could hear the phones of my mother's normally immaculate work environment ringing off the hook. Could hear the fear in her voice.

I turned on the news. Saw the towers burning. Saw them fall. Images that hollow out the bottom of my stomach to this day. And, in my shock, I was riveted. Just entranced by the coverage. Waiting for someone, for something to make sense of it all. It was a trance I don't believe I came out of for weeks. My phone continued to ring as the web of my family drew tightly about itself as we all tried to contact each other. I spoke with my mother, again, as word was being passed around that the building was closing and they could all go home. When I was talking with my sister, I realized, right then, that the Michigan game was never going to be played. That a stadium full of a hundred thousand people was at once too tempting a target and too frightening a prospect. My brother needed to be picked up from high school, which had been closed as well. My aunt wanted to see if I was okay. My uncle wanted to know if I wanted to drive with him to New York to see if there was anyway to help. My grandmother wanted to know what she was going to do with her plane tickets to Florida as the planes were being grounded. Really, I think she just wanted to complain. Everyone wanted to know if I'd heard from my cousins who lived in the Bronx. I wanted to call my friends. Not because I had any reason beyond seeing if they were alright. Not because it would do anything. But because hearing their voices would make me feel just that small bit better.

That was my Tuesday, on September the 11th, six years ago. And I'm afraid now. It feels so much like that day. And we've done so much to squander that amazing moment when things felt so wrong. Because it was also a moment we were pulled together by our shared tragedy. Not one, I think, where the world changed but one where people were willing to. A watershed moment in our history, a chance to divert ourselves from our current path, and redirect ourselves into something new. But the road we've traveled since then has been one filled with blood and tears as we've pulled ourselves even further apart. Misguided wars, grabs for power, and the cowardice of those who were supposed to lead have left us no better protected than we were six year ago. And what I fear, right now, is that we're much worse off. That it's only a matter of time before my phone rings again in response to some other disaster because, somehow, it's all gone wrong again.

But while I'm afraid, I'm also hopeful. Because that horrible day six years ago was one I'd never have wished for, true, but it was one that spurred me to action. Pushed me out of the doldrums, of complacency. By the end of that year, I was in a different place, trying, working to make it better. Pushing myself past the limits I thought I had because I've always thought it best to try and take something positive out of the bad times. It wasn't long, of course, before it all fell apart and I, again, found myself at a loss. But, I did, for that brief, wonderful time, manage to turn from my course. And if I can do that once, I can do it again. And if I can do it, then everyone can. This day, this situation we find ourselves in, might be a sad one. It might be for the best to take today to pause, to reflect on who we are and where we've come from, and properly mourn that. But we're not so far gone, not so poor off, that we can't improve, if we would but only try.