I was sitting in the green chair in my grandma and grandpa’s living room, eating oatmeal from a tray my grandma had brought me–like she did every morning before I headed off to classes. My grandpa sat across from me in his recliner, his bad leg stretched out and his cocker spaniel loyally perched at the end of his chair. He sipped his coffee and hollered for my grandma to come take his tray while we watched the morning news. Like always, he volleyed channels between The Today Show, Fox News and CNN, reaching for the remote every time a commercial appeared, and he made good grandfatherly conversation with me in between headlines. Like asking what tests I had coming up and how much more I had to write on that British Literature paper I was procrastinating finishing.
This was our routine.
My hair was still wet and I was running late, so I ate quickly, skipping the mug of thick apricot nectar my grandma had poured to accompany my breakast. She poured it for me every morning; I skipped it every morning, but either she didn’t notice or perhaps was persistent and thought I’d eventually drink what she was certain to be good for me.
And then Matt Lauer cut his story short and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. And we talked about what could possibly have gone wrong until we watched, live, as the second plane hit. My grandma peered around from the kitchen and the three of us stared, silently, and suddenly I wasn’t so hungry.
I skipped my classes that day, instead choosing to stay near my grandpa’s chair where it felt safe. I drank cup after cup of my grandma’s weak coffee, nervously fingering the handle of my mug while we watched footage for hours of sirens, fires, smoke and fear. I called my dad, my mom, my sister, my brother, my friends. By late afternoon I was emotionally exhausted from forcing myself to imagine what it would be like. To be on that plane, to be in that building, to be wondering if the person I loved made it out alive. I asked my grandpa questions and drank up his answers. He was smart and experienced and strangely calm through the disturbing images of horror I’ll never forget. He prayed out loud with my grandma and me, eloquently bellowing words intended for the victims of that day but comforting me instead.
I remember I had had enough come evening. I laid on my bed and cried because I was scared. I was twenty-two years old and felt the vulnerability of a young child who needed to be scooped up and protected, and I was embarrassed for how scared I felt–for how naive I was of world issues, politics, terrorism, relationships between people and countries. I thought it was the end of us all.
I’ll never forget what my grandpa told me that night. I walked into his office in my pajamas and sat next to his desk where he had just finished his nightly ham radio session. He wasn’t usually the person I approached during emotional breakdowns but, for some reason, he was the one who would calm my fears–I knew it.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked him, crying.
And he smiled and told me that yes, it was sad and yes, this would greatly affect us. But then he said, “Listen to this old man. I’ve been around for a long enough time to see a lot of bad things happen. I’ve seen devastation in a lot of parts of the world, but people overcome. They always overcome. It will be okay.”
I’ve thought of these words so many times in my life and, of course, at that moment had no idea just how much his wisdom would mean years later after he was gone. But it’s true. We overcome.
Something happened between that fateful day ten years ago and today’s memorial that has changed the way I look at the events and effects of September 11. I had children. And everything–everything seems to matter so much more. I don’t know how to make sense of it all, and it’s difficult to weigh the importance of the safety of our children and our country with the greater principle of changing the world to a place of compassion and peace. I’ve shielded Lainey’s eyes this week from the memorable images of that day–protecting her from things her little 4-year-old mind doesn’t need to know quite yet. And yet I want her to know someday because it’s important.
And what will I tell her? I don’t know. I hope that her world and the world of her children will be so much better than ours. And when my mind stretches and trails off dangerously to a future that overwhelms me, I rein it in to the comfortable, focused task of today. You teach compassion and love. You live compassion and love. I can handle that today.
What do you remember from that day?
