a year later

[spiderdust]

Last year, around 6am-ish, ldyicefire woke up with a migraine. A BAD one, bad enough to make her get out of bed & throw up.

About an hour later, her mom called her cell phone & left a voice message. ldyicefire was still trying to deal with her headache somewhat, so she didn't get to the phone in time to talk to her mom or to listen to the message right away. When she did check the voice mail a little later, she heard this cryptic message from her mother (paraphrased from memory):

Life's too short... it's 10am and I'm sitting here watching the bombings in New York and Washington DC, and I thought I'd call and tell you I loved you. (click)

I was in the living room when she listened to the message, so I didn't understand why Nexus suddenly ran out of the bedroom and was frantically looking for CNN, and getting frustrated & angry that he couldn't find the channel. I didn't know what was going on, so I went into the bedroom and complained to ldyicefire that Nexus was being cranky over the TV for some reason. She was quiet & stared at the ceiling, then told me what her mother had said. I figured someone had bombed the World Trade Center again, like they had about a decade before. Not a wonderful thought, but possibly not too bad.

Nexus came back into the bedroom, ashen, and said, "Oh my fucking God. Remember the two towers of the World Trade Center? There's only one now."

He told us about how a plane had flown into the tower, and how a little later, another plane flew into the Pentagon. I went into the living room to stare at the TV, looking at the one tower standing next to the smoking ruin, and while I watched, the 2nd tower collapsed.

We kept watching it all morning, afraid that this wouldn't be the end. We called friends and loved ones, even family members that we had stopped speaking to were called. We posted on e-mail lists and ISCA. We met a friend for lunch, because we needed to do something to feel like things were still normal for a while. Even as we drove to Chevy's to meet him, we were listening to the news on the radio, and were very aware of how the skies were so weirdly empty, and noticed how Stanford looked like a ghost town.

We came home and kept watching, wondering if ldyicefire's cousin in New York was ok... trying to remember where in the city he worked. We wondered about the passengers on Flight 93, the one that crashed itself in a field in Pennsylvania... wondered how frightened they must have been, even though they sacrificed themselves to keep others from being harmed, wondering where that plane would have headed if they hadn't. Finally at night, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, we turned the TV off.

I don't remember how we dealt with the Munchkin that day. I'm sure we kept her from knowing what was going on... somehow. I don't even know how I could have explained it to her without giving her nightmares for life. We got a newspaper that day... I have it stored with all of her "memory things", like her flattened souvenir pennies from the zoo and such. It just felt important to me that she have that newspaper.

In the days that followed, we lit candles, we kept reading & posting to our e-mail lists, we visited loved ones, we wondered if things would ever feel normal again. We saw the flags everywhere we turned, along with a lot of unpleasant bigotry. We disagreed on political issues, such as Bush declaring war on Afghanistan. We continued to watch the news, but not as fervently as we did on the 1st day. We hugged and kissed each other. We went through the security lines at the San Diego zoo a few weeks later and had men in camouflage uniforms search the diaper bag.


Now... it's a year later.

I still cry if I think about it too much. When someone I know and care about flies, I fret and worry that something will happen to the plane (even though my head knows the plane will be fine). When ldyicefire has the radio on in the car and "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" comes on, I want to smack Toby Keith in the mouth for singing it; those words do NOT represent how I feel about things. I still hate war. However, I'm alive... and everyone I know is safe & ok. And I'm thankful for that.

I'm not sure how today is going to be for me. Part of me thinks it's time to move on from the tragedy, to just treat it as a usual day. I'll probably do that for the most part, but I'll probably light a candle later today. I know it doesn't help the people who died or their families, but it feels like something I should do. Just something simple and quiet and unobtrusive to honor them.

It's now 4:54am here. I've taken nearly an hour & a half to write this post, but it felt important to me that I make it. Thanks for reading.