It’s impossible to write about September 11, 2001 without clichés, without sounding maudlin or false. I’ve avoided writing about it for those reasons, but this year I realized I’m teaching students who were five and eight years old when it happened, very near to my kids' current ages. Most students have little to no understanding of that day. Some day I’ll have to explain it to Addie and Henry, who were born after it happened, and they'll want to know where I was, what I felt. Even the ordinary, the same, deserves remembering and telling. For that reason, I’m including this memory in my blog. After ten years there’s another piece I’m ready to write about, too.
Like millions of other people, I woke up to a phone call that Tuesday morning. It came just after the first plane hit. I was twenty two, home sick in my dark bedroom on a planned absence from student teaching. The early phone call woke me in my bed. My first thought was that I was in some kind of trouble for taking a rare day off.
“Turn on your TV,” Brian said. I complied with curiosity and tried to understand what I saw on the 13-inch screen. I scooted to the foot of my mattress to get a better look. Frantic reporters tried to make sense of a gaping mouth in the side North Tower of the World Trade Center. I remember talk about what kind of plane could have flown into a building. There was speculation about a small aircraft, a general lack of immediate suspicion, and for a moment: at least the appearance of calm.
I stared at the news crawl across smoking tower, wondering what this was. I recalled the enigmatic hysterics of my French teacher during the 1993 and 1995 bombings at the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City; for some reason this resonated with the same hollow tone. The intensity of the reports started to turn. Trepidation crept into the voices of reporters like dye through water. The second plane hit. It seemed like another camera angle of the first until I realized there were now two jagged gashes, two plumes of smoke. I held my breath, stunned at having watched people die. The tenor of reporting turned, decisive. From that point I couldn’t leave the TV.
Time stopped, but the devastation continued in what felt like an endless chain of dominoes. A plane hit the Pentagon. The South Tower collapsed. Another plane, down in a Pennsylvania field. Then the North Tower curled in on itself sending a second shadowy cloud of decay across Manhattan. I was scared to be in my house alone, scared to be seeing but scared also to turn it off. I felt torn. Should I go in to school? I knew if I went, I’d be in the way--useless--another worried soul for my master teachers to corral. I wanted to stay home where I wouldn’t have to be brave. I wanted to be with E. I wanted to believe that what I watched on TV was not real, that such absolute mortality wasn’t unfurling, live, before the eyes of the entire country.
For three days we watched the TV together, half expecting the rest of the world to unravel like a threadbare sweater. Time and streets were still. People only looked each other briefly in the eye as if to say “I know.” We stared at the TV screen in our apartment until our eyes dried and there was nothing left for reporters to say. The devastation was unimaginable. The country was numb.
Our concern became E’s parents who were in Alaska on a cruise. Their flight, like many others was canceled and painstakingly rescheduled. I’ve never been so happy to see someone at the gate, so relieved to have them on the ground at home. Even the drive to and from the airport made me nervous. Like so many that weekend we headed to church looking for answers, peace that might make this bearable. It didn’t come.
Most of my memory of that time is so universal and common. Nothing about my experience is remarkable, but I remember the entire morning I heard the news. There is, though, one small piece unique to my recollection which makes remembering that fall all the more painful. Somewhere in the time around 9/11, E and I conceived our first child.
I can’t say with any truth if it was before or after, but I suspect in the “after” of the tragedy, we didn’t have much concern for things like birth control. It wasn’t a planned pregnancy, but it wasn’t an unplanned one either. I can’t imagine why we made that choice during that horrible few weeks, but I do know that life narrowed to a pinpoint; family and home became the focus for everyone. E and I had each other. Perhaps that’s why. I don’t know--but I do know it happened somewhere in that cloudy time.
The memory stings because I miscarried that child in November of 2001. Though we moved joyfully out of our small apartment and into a rental house in the short time I carried that small life, losing it bookended the confusion and uncertainty of the September tragedy. Those months were once again a time of fear, of feeling unsure about what was ahead, of feeling like certainties could not be counted upon. The miscarriage was surprising, drawn out and painful. I wouldn’t take pain medication for it. I needed to feel the loss, but it surpassed my tolerance for emotional and physical pain. Though that tiny loss was nothing compared to what so many endured across the country, it shook me because it represented uncertainty in my own home. I settled deep into a depression the likes of which I have not experienced in the rest of my adult life.
In the ten years since, distance quiets both memories. I can’t say either is forgotten, because each left a deep imprint: a fear-memory and a pain-memory. Both events left me feeling helpless. Both marked, in a way, the opening of a door to adulthood, different than marriage or graduation. Both events showed me how life takes unexpected, painful turns. There’s nothing more adult than death, nothing else which demands with such certainty that we look beyond our assumptions and keep moving forward.
What I try to remember about the fall of 2001 is how people came together, how even in fear and shock, man is basically good. I try to remember how people reached out to help those in crisis. I try to remember how no one bad thing is forever.
It's so weird to think that the kids you are teaching now were so little then. That was my sophmore year of highschool, just a few short months before you became my teacher!
2014 is donezo. Or as close to it as I will get. I have big plans to be swaddled in flannel and fast asleep well before midnight.
Generally I've made a point of answering a set of year-end reflection questions. You can read those responses (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010) if you're so inclined. But I'm changing things up. This is code for "I am too tired to answer all those damn questions." So here's what I thought about 2014:
In late January, Henry had a tonsillectomy. It frigging sucked. I had no idea how rough that kind of thing is and I just didn't see it coming. Too many adults in my life downplayed kid pain and played up kids' ability to "bounce back." Henry didn't bounce for a long time. Homeboy didn't react well to his pain medication and his recovery was slow. He's fine and in the scheme of things it was minor. But when it was happening I felt that helpless B.S. feeling that I have only known as a parent. Lesson learned (again) in 2014: Seeing my kids in pain hurts more than anything.
One of the best things I did this year was GO (my one little word resolution from last year--odd how those always work out), and specifically take trips by myself. I am just not the same person I was three years ago--the kind of person who would have thought going places was a good idea and then never done anything about it. In March I spent a day entertaining myself in San Francisco, and by June I was on a plane to Ireland. And then England, France. For the first time in my life, I actually did go. And go, and go, and go (I walked about a hundred miles in three weeks...) And I loved it. I've found that not only am I okay traveling by myself, it makes me really happy. Discovering that this year was pure joy. There is a huge world to see, and I'm not waiting for permission anymore to go see it.
My goal last year, just after finishing my MFA, was to figure out how to integrate writing into my daily life. I didn't want writing to be something I talked about and didn't do. I knew I could write if I could find time, but finishing my thesis made me an emotional wreck. I couldn't sustain that kind of writing over a lifetime. I needed to find a way to make writing as routine as showing up to my [other] job. I was panicky about this in December. At that point I didn't even have a space in our house dedicated to writing, and it felt like writing was something extra I was layering on top of all my other responsibilities. I didn't want it to be that. The most important thing I did this year was develop habits that would facilitate writing (and work as a book critic) as a viable job. I didn't want it to take me away from my family or leave me drained by the end of the day so I'd be Horrible Troll Mom. I feel really good about the fact that I've figured it/myself out. I am writing (and reading, the other part of this job that takes a billion hours), which I love, but I am also present for my family. I am very busy, but I am very happy. The routine will change--in fact, it's always changing--but I've figured out what my process looks like. I've also given myself permission to call it my job.
2014 wasn't the best year, but it wasn't the worst year, either. So many wonderful things happened to me (and I stood in front of the oldest known Beowulf manuscript, you guys. Gah.) I think the best part of 2014 was giving up fears I'd held on to for a long time: That I'd never be able to work writing into my real life. That I wasn't the kind of person with enough confidence to travel. That I couldn't be a good mom to my kids and wife to E if I was working diligently at something just for myself. Goodbye to all that.
So. Tomorrow I'll be writing about 2015, but it won't be here. I decided it's time for a change, so I'll be moving over to a domain that's my name, like a big girl. I will leave all of my posts here until I have the time to go back over 1500 of them and update links. (Eek?) But beginning tomorrow, you can find me at hspartington.com. See you there.