Remembering

It was one of those days when the air is warm in the morning and has a bit of a kick to it in the late afternoon. The sky was pale blue and there was a light breeze, just enough to lift the hair around my face as I stared unseeing at the horizon.

I was in Spanish class when we turned on the television to watch. We never did finish those verb drills. I remember people crying; I remember muttered prayers and expressions of anger and shock and fear. I remember thinking that maybe it was the end of the world, and maybe we should all hide somewhere.

It took me until about noon to realize that part of me thought we were watching a movie. I kept waiting for Arnold Schwarznegger, or someone, to walk in front of the television cameras, to walk in between me and those awful thickening ashes of people, and say a few dramatic lines. I kept waiting for a soundtrack to play and the screaming extras to leave the set. That never happened, though. It was there and it wasn't changing or clearing or cutting to the next scene. There was nothing to stop the flames and smoke that profaned the blueness of the sky.

I remember herding the little ones outside to play. They screamed and ran and I flinched, because in their innocent ignorance they seemed to mimic the wounded on the screen inside. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real, this is a Tom Clancy novel come to life.

My sister was in school then on Staten Island. She called and told us of how she and her coworkers watched the Towers fall from their windows. I saw them fall, too, and that was, I think, a bigger shock for me than their getting hit in the first place. They fell. Nothing that big is supposed to be able to fall. But they fell, and I saw it. So did my sister. So did a lot of people.

There was a helplessness that came in the following days-- I wanted to do something, but there was nothing to do save for going to school, as usual. But nothing was usual. I thought for a few days that there would be a war, that this was like Pearl Harbor, that maybe my brothers would be drafted and I would go be a Red Cross nurse somewhere. My head was full of romantic nonsense bred by inactivity and frustration and fear.

And everyone became very tender suddenly-- I remember strangers hugging each other in grocery stores, holding one another and weeping, and comforting, or just sharing tight-lipped watery smiles. It was okay to stop and talk to people you didn't know at all, because we all were afraid, and we all were feverishly preparing for-- we knew not what.

A lot of people kept saying things about God. How this was bringing them back to Him, or how they couldn't find Him in this, or how they had nowhere else to turn. They seemed to be afraid, like kids scurrying back to their kitchens when someone hits a ball that breaks a window. Men and women would smile widely and speak loudly on news shows and talk about what God meant by allowing this, and I wanted them all to shut up and talk to Him instead of talking about Him. Maybe He'd tell you a thing or two if you'd listen, instead of filling silence with your suppositions, I wanted to say.

It's been five years and all the kids are back out in the street again, swinging at the ball. People still talk about God on the news, but now they don't really even bother pretending that they talk to Him often. Those hellish billowing pictures get played on the television screen, and people who see them slow down a little and talk more quietly. Their voices deepen, too. A little spark of anger and disbelief still burns, the sorrow still runs deep, but soon they nod wisely and move along, back to business as usual. Maybe they don't believe it could happen again. Maybe they've moved on.
Maybe they've all forgotten.

In one sense I can understand the desire to forget. We all went through that gauntlet of emotion. Fear and rage mingled with relief as reports from loved ones flowed in. Despair and incredulity combined to create a sort of narcotic effect, a numbness that would be exhausting to try to revisit. But you do not see any strangers hugging in the canned goods aisles now, either.

If we forget, we will become careless. If we forget, we will dishonor the memories of the many gallant dead. If we forget, those who perpetrated this will take note and respond accordingly. But so many people look back on five years ago and see something to be exploited, and if that is what they are after then I say, better to forget it, if that is all it is to you.

I didn't know any of the people who were caught in the flaming waves and twisted rubble that day. But part of me died with them, and I cannot forget who they might have been.

I cannot pretend to understand the how or why or what of that day. Here is what I know.
God is, always. God is good, always.
Those are the answers and someday I may understand them.