Five years ago, with the images of the planes hitting the twin towers looping on all available media, I was overcome with a need to touch AC. I had to see and hold that five-year-old innocent whose world, and future, had abruptly changed.
She didn’t understand why Mommy sat on the floor in the daycare hall, holding her and crying… and she doesn’t remember it today. Five years is ancient history when you’re ten, but inside, Mommy still cries.
For three days, I’ve tried to articulate my feelings about that day. I’ve drafted, revised, and deleted endlessly… but I just can’t write about it.
Days of retrospection have produced nothing but emotional, incoherent babble — inadequate, futile attempts to articulate feelings more painful than I was prepared to handle.
Because to confront September 11 in my heart, I also have to remember September 10; I don’t know which hurts more.
I won’t spend today watching those planes fly, again and again, into the WTC. I remember it clearly. I don’t need to see people falling, or jumping; the images are seared into my mind.
Today, I’ll grieve for those who died that day, and since, and I’ll also mourn the ailing soul of our country, the slowly fading memories of the America that was, and for the radically altered future of the children — all of them.
I’m with you. I will not turn on the TV today. I spent too much time on the original 9/11 watching that footage. I can’t watch it anymore, and won’t go see movies about it, either. It’s not that I want to forget… it’s that I *can’t* forget. I just prefer to keep that memory in a little box in a dark corner of my brain, so I can still function every day in a world that I know includes other people who would do such things without qualms. (shudder)
At least you had your AC with you, Poli – mine was in high school that day, and there was a good bit of concern (on both sides) about each other’s well-being (I spent the day “working”, as it were, from home. My boss felt it should be safe to drive to work, I mentioned – prophetically – the possibility of the police over-reacting, which actually happened here. It seems I was *very* prophetic that day, something I have never been happy about.)
The one thing I remember was wishing I had my finger on the button controlling the nukes – if I had, then I would have *erased* OBL and everything within 100 miles of him from the face of the earth, without giving it a second thought. OTOH, I might have just given the CIA a hunting license – after all, he wasn’t (and isn’t) a head of state.
~EdT.
Freedom Trees of September
by R.T. Lowe
What’s this that you say? Two towers blown away.
The ones we’ve seen on movies and tv.
I ask why should I care? Tall trees here scrape the air.
Towers were never icons at all for me.
But the tv’s on the desk, I’ll watch if you think it best.
Remember New York to me is just wonderland.
Friends live there I know, or at least on the comedy show.
There are subways, a Tall Lady, not much room to stand.
A cop and a fireman? You know, like our cousin Beaux.
Dressed in heavy damage suit, with dirty face guard.
What’s that he just said? He thinks his brother might be dead.
Saw a concrete beam fall. Hit the truck cab hard.
Why must they continue to replay, the planes that hit today?
Don’t they know that buildings, though tall, have no soul?
Don’t they see there’re people dieing, family at home crying?
Buildings aren’t the concern. It is what they hold!
The skyline had been made famous, by the media who gave us
These pictures from the ground, and the sky above.
But to many citizens of the U.S., the buildings’ reality was at best,
Just fleeting images and those not much to love.
Look to the fireman on bended knee, and the secretary whose eyes no longer see,
The kin of those who bravely when up when others went down.
To those Americans we can relate, and each one we’re concerned their fate.
Until the last of the innocent, live and dead, are found.
So let those damned buildings go away. Don’t make 9/11 a holiday.
The day was infamy, a storm of pain and tears in flood.
But remember those families’ dead, and understand words long ago said,
The “Tree of Freedom” will only grow in hero’s blood.
When the new building there is done, please plant 49 trees in a bed crimson.
To remind New Yorkers they are never alone.
‘Cause our people want them to know, in each state their sacrifice helped grow,
That “Tree of Freedom” that joins us all as one.