Remembering

All day today I have had a nagging sensation at the edges of my awareness, the sensation you have when you know you've forgotten something. Only, it's what I'm remembering there around the edges of the business of the day that is bothering me. This is September 11th.

The fact that it has been 7 years since that September 11th does nothing to change the fact that it seems strange, somehow, that the world should go on as usual on this day. And yet, it has been 7 years and I realized today that I'm starting to forget. Not that the date September 11th will ever again be unremarkable; it still gives me a seconds pause any time I use it. Nor can I at all forget the horror of that day, though I know it in fact felt more surreal on that day than it did in the days that followed. I remember an elementary school assignment to ask a grandparent or elder where they were when they hear Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and I remember that my grandmother could immediately and definitively tell me she'd been in the dining hall. There is no question I will be able to tell my grandchildren with that same certainty where I was when I learned a plane had crashed in to the World Trade Center.

I was standing in the middle of my basement apartment in D.C. with my morning coffee. My Tax class had been canceled, and I'd turned on the morning news later than usual. The first footage I saw was the Pentagon engulfed in flames, and for a second I thought it was a movie, and a strange movie to be playing so early in the day. I still remember very clearly the feeling of my stomach tightening as I grasped that this was reality, watching the footage change to that of the World Trade Center.

That moment will always be crystal clear, as will others. But, even the pieces I remember so clearly I find I can't quite put in order. Others, I'm sure I've forgotten. Somehow, I thought I'd always remember it all, though I know the mind doesn't work that way.

I remember calling home to reassure my family and that Dad was home alone. He hadn't yet heard of the attacks. But, was that before or after they located the final plane, the one the passengers crashed in to a field? I think it must have been before. I remember clearly how much that missing plane scared me, and that I stayed inside until it went down. They believed the goal might be to bring that plane to the capitol, and I was living only 10 blocks from the capitol. I remember reassuring Dad that my basement apartment was the safest place I could be, protected by all those bricks and under the ground.

It must have been later when I sat on my steps, with my neighbors, and watched the parade of cars evacuating the Hill - using both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue in a mass exodus. Actually, I guess the word would be evacuation. But, it couldn't have been too much later, could it? I remember my landlady, a federal employee at the Department of the Interior, was able to find a way home by mid-day. But, she praised her cab driver for finding a way to get her home through the maze of re-routed streets, so maybe it was much later.

I know I went back out many times during the day. I took a picture of the sun setting behind the Capitol building, flag flying atop, which somehow felt symbolic to me. I don't actually remember the constant noise of the helicopters and planes (presumably military), but I remember telling others about it weeks later and how in that moment it fit.

At some point, I walked to church and sat talking with my friends in hushed tones. Breathing a sigh of relief each time a new member who was traveling or working at the Pentagon was reported safe, but not really feeling strongly about any of it. This, then, was when I had reached the point that it was all surreal. I even remember briefly discussing whether we were crazy to be gathering even closer to the most likely targets and deciding we needed to be at church regardless. That must have been in the afternoon, because I remember that we sat out on the steps. We needed the fresh air and the sun.

I know I was scared for Kayla, who was still a flight attendant for United that year, and that at some point early in the day I learned she wasn't flying that day. Was I able to talk to her or to one of the girls? I remember it was difficult to get a phone line that day. I must have talked to my family again, to Alex. I don't remember it.

Life does, in fact, go back to normal, and the memories do start to fade. But, I suspect this day will always be different, that there will always be the nagging sensation at the edge of it.

I've always hesitated to write about September 11th. So many have written about it more eloquently than I ever could, and others from a much more powerful point of view. Today I decided to write, because I'm starting to forget and I want to remember. This post is for me.

Marking History with Booms

(loud boom shakes the windows)

A: Whoa, what was that?

C: Is the shuttle due home tonight?  Because, that sounded like re-entry.

A: Oh, maybe.  That did sound like the sonic boom

A quick check of the internet and a BBC article confirmed the shuttle had indeed safely returned to Kennedy Space Center.  

Its wonderful living in a place where you can readily identify the sound of the sound barrier being broken* and that gives you very personal memories of shuttle launches.  I have dozens of memories of standing out on the school of the lawn watching the huge smoke trails the shuttle makes across a blue sky as it launches.  And the awesome spectacle when my parents took us to see a night launch - parked on the side of the road at Cape Canaveral watching the huge flames erupt and light up the horizon.  Feeling as small as an ant against the enormity of the machine and the knowledge it would be traveling in to space.  

The Challenger explosion was a vivid reminder of just how precarious this whole enterprise was.  It was January, my Dad's birthday, and I was sick again.  Mom decided not to wake me up to go out in the cold to see the launch.  I'd seen others.  My classmates watched from the school lawn, as did my mother from the parking lot of her office.  Dad, engrossed in a project, brushed his colleagues off when they called him to the window for the launch.  "I've seen plenty of launches."  But, he quickly ran to the window when the shouts began, something was very wrong.  The stories were replayed for weeks, months even, as we followed the news of the investigation.  Ice on the shuttle - pushing the boundaries by launching in unusually cold temperatures.  And, in the end, defective O rings.  Every school child learned what an O ring was that year... I'm sure everyone was impacted by such a national tragedy, but its always just a little more personal when it is in your backyard.  We all wanted to be astronauts in those days.

Its probably just as well for our careers that we didn't become astronauts, as it turns out.  The shuttles are being retired, to be replaced by some other means of travel to space, and the demise of the space program in central Florida seems likely.  I'll be very sorry to see it go.

 *For those of you who don't live in such a place, it sounds like a huge transformer blowing in your backyard or like a car ran in to something really big and slightly hollow.  My Mom once thought she'd hit something when the sonic boom of a shuttle re-entry coincided with her pulling out of a parking space.  She had a few worried moments before she remembered the shuttle was scheduled to return.

Of Coffee and Clove Cigarettes

There was a coffee house in my hometown that served very little in the way of good coffee, but was a venue for local bands and a teenage hangout. It was in an old building - dark and dusty, with 'found object' art on the walls mismatched cafe sets and a very liberal policy. I know they served alcohol later, when I was older, but in my teenage memories its the smell of old wood, coffee and clove cigarettes. Teenagers trying to be grown up, and by virtue of that very act being quintessentially teenagers.

But it was the live music that clinched the deal. We could sit in the dark on those creaky chairs, sipping our coffee or chai and watching the local bands performing under the bright lights of the "stage", a series of box platforms shoved in a corner. The music was always too loud to allow you to hear one another, but we pretended we were building relationships anyway. One night a week was open mic night, but it was the weekends, when the bands played, that we loved.

One summer night my friends and I were hanging out at the coffee house and we heard a band that even I could tell was something special. Tabitha's Secret. They played songs that had interesting lyrics, and they weren't playing cover songs. And they were good. I bought their tape that night and played it often. And then I heard one of the songs on the radio. Slightly different, but only slightly. Matchbox 20? Who is that? That's 3 a.m., and Tabitha's Secret recorded that song at least two years ago. I have the tape.

It turns out Matchbox 20 is the band most of Tabitha's Secret joined. (A high school friend told me there was only a one person difference, but I've never actually checked that fact.) The little local band that played the coffee house in my hometown is on the top 40. It felt like a brush with fame, and I still get a little thrill when I think of it.

I'm dorky like that.