thoughts on waking

it's midnight, and i can't sleep, again. seems like my sleep cycle is all wacked out, probably from too many naps induced by two weeks on antibiotics and allergies that won't quit. and then there's the thought of that red plaid shirt, sitting under my chair, in a quiet corner of the room. i love that shirt. it's one of my favorites. but everytime i wear it, i remember the first time i wore it, and it changes everything.

i know there are a lot of people who will be blogging about september 11, today. i guess i'll just cast my lot with them, and tell you what i remember, what i learned, and what i hope it all means.

i spent the day before doing day-off kind of things. i bought my first cell phone, fixed dinner for my roommates, and stayed up watching the news. i woke up sometime around 8 or so, to the alarm clock, with the radio disc jockey mumbling something bizarre in my ear about snipers on rooftops, which i assumed was just another stupid radio escapade to boost ratings. my allergies were bothering me on that morning, too, so i decided to reset the alarm for 9:30 and see how i felt, and maybe call in to work. i think i had been asleep for maybe 5 minutes when the phone in our apartment started ringing off the hook.

i stumbled into the hallway, and grabbed the phone, right about the time my roommate caroline opened her door. celeste was on the phone, practically hysterically telling me something about planes and new york, and that i needed to turn on the tv NOW. caro had a tv in her room, and we immediately turned it on. you know what we saw. it was incredible. we stood there at the foot of her bed, watching the tv, in utter amazement. we grabbed hands, like two little girls in our pj's and cried. we didn't even know what was going on at that point. not really, anyway. i have no idea how long we stood there, but i remember watching the south tower come down, and having that feeling like i absolutely couldn't believe what i was seeing. i didn't believe my eyes. i couldn't. i didn't want to.

i called work. i was told to dress and drive as quickly and safely as i could into the office. i think i asked caroline if she wanted to go with me, but i think she said she would stay at home and wait for our other roommate chris to call home. chris's sister lived and worked in lower manhattan. it was surreal.

i drove down 183, and passed businesses who'd already lowered their flags to half-staff. i listened to the radio, understanding perfectly well what the dj's had meant when i turned them off earlier that morning. it was an otherworldly drive into work. the roads were wide open. all the radio stations had switched to their news affliates. there was no music, no morning hi-jinks, no commercials, no relief, nothing but wall to wall to wall to wall information. and even that was spotty, at best.

i got to work in my red plaid shirt, cut princess style, with three-quarter sleeves. i remember getting out of my car and thinking that this would be one of the days where i remembered everything--what i was wearing, what i did, who i saw, who i talked to and who i couldn't reach. i had been in dc a month ago, had lived there. i had friends who still lived there. i couldn't reach them. couldn't even get the phone to ring.

work, at the church, was chaotic, at best. we had a tv plugged in and rigged to get a channel or two in nancy's office. we all went to work answering phones. i finally got totally overstimulated and went to cry in my office, across the yard from the main building. i turned on the tv in there, and saw press conferences, replayed images of what became 4 crashes and crash sites. i heard body counts, etc. what i remembered was no sense of relief at all. there were no commercials, which i found oddly disconcerting. it just never stopped. i remember many phone calls to my family that day...over and over, just brief little calls, just checking in.

i got home that night, after what seemed like years at work. i canceled plans with some friends from college. i was just to strung out to be around people. chris finally heard from her sister, so we all breathed a sigh of relief. i heard from my friend hope, who was shaken up, but ok in dc. we heard from a friend of chris's that worked on capital hill that as he was driving up mass ave, after his office was evacuated, that he felt the concussion of the plane that hit the pentagon. hope said that there were machine gun turrets set up all around dc, that there were guys in camo on every street corner. that she didn't know what was happening, but that the office shut down for the day, and that never happened. i remember being glad that hope and i had gone and donated blood in august, before i moved back home. my aunt and uncle were in las vegas that weekend. they were supposed to fly out on the 11th, but their flight got cancelled. my uncle says that he saw a guy offer a cabbie $6000 to drive him all the way home to Chicago. he and my aunt waited three days to get out of vegas. caroline missed one of her best friend's wedding. we watched tv late into the night, every night, and drank a lot of hot tea.

i remember the days that followed. i remember faces on tv, names of people missing, smoldering piles of buildings, and the intensity of the panic surrounding it all. i remember watching the news, not just because that was all that was on, but because that was all i wanted to watch. i remember logging onto the cnn.com website every thirty minutes, and checking the news wires. i had nightmares for a long time. still do, some nights.

i guess it was the same day the president presided at the memorial service at national cathedral that i realized things were going to be different from then on. strange how it took me a whole week. i knew (and still know) people who lost dear friends, people who lost family members, people who lost jobs, etc. i watched a city that i dearly loved and lived in and another city i idealized and dreamed about be turned upside down and cut to pieces. it seemed so surreal, like at any moment, someone would come on the tv, and say, ha ha, this national disaster drill was a test, and only a test...instead the news played on, the memorial service tied up, and all of the sudden, a seinfeld re-run picked up in mid course on the picture screen. it was so bizarre. so unsettling. but oddly perfect, in a horrible belch-out loud-at-the-dinner party-because- you're-stumbling-drunk kind of way. i looked at the screen, with george and elaine going nuts over george's tupee, and i burst into tears. i think i was most afraid that everything was going back to normal, and that nothing would ever be normal again.

september 11th is one of those benchmark days. i wasn't alive when pearl harbour was bombed, when jfk was assassinated, or when elvis died. i remember what the world was like on september 10th, and i will never be able to give that to my children. and even if it was just a mirage, even if we were never as safe and secure as we thought we were, i wish for just a minute we could hold our breaths and feel that way, again. and at the same time, i'm glad we don't harbour that illusion any longer.

the truth of the matter is that i don't think any of us are sure about what the legacy of september 11th is or will be. i think that we all have so many unanswered and unasked questions about the nature of ourselves and how we relate to the world to begin defining a legacy. (you can read more about the lives of people who were lost that day at http://www.dcroe.com/2996/. my good friend tpon has a great blog up about her and her husband's friend, christopher mello, at prolly.blogs.com.)

what i do know is that 2,996 people were killed that day. while their deaths are heartbreaking, appalling, and horribly unfair, i think the legacy we have to build is about their lives, who they were, and what they meant. and we have to start living out of an attitude of love and hope, not one of fear and pessimism. we have to start behaving that way, as well, on a personal level, with the people we see on the streets, in our offices, at school, on the bus, in traffic, in restaurants, etc. this world is reminded every day of how awful we can be to each other. we can do better. we must do better. we owe it to our brothers and sisters who died 5 years ago. and we owe it to a loving and precious savior who stretched out his arms, and loved us into wholeness, and calls us to be holy.

it's 1am. there's a little boy who knows nothing of this event, nothing of this blog, nothing of the world except what God whispers in his ear, who's waiting to see me at 6am, so i can get him ready for another day of school. but if i could tell him one thing it would be that i believe there is enough love in this world to overcome all the hate. i believe that.

mil besos--rmg