Soapbox

Alive and Well

So I’ve got these kids…

and they’re both alive and well. I’m focusing on that, right now.
A day that will live in infamy, they say. It’s almost too much to think about, let alone write about, but here I am trying. I wonder how wise- or foolish- these thoughts will seem, years from now.

Strange to think that the day started out like any other, with my mind full of thoughts of school schedules and choir practice and getting the garbage put out for collection. I was in the basement writing an e-mail about Steve’s first day of high school when the phone rang. It was Ted.
"Turn on the TV" he said bruskly.
"What channel" I asked.
"Any channel" he replied.

And there it was, a long-distance view of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, looking like a pair of just-extinguished candles, with plumes of smoke drifting high into the glorious vault of the blue September sky. I gaped in disbelief at the silent video images I saw, and heard the calm voices of the commentators explaining that airplanes had crashed into the towers. It was quite eerie to watch, because it was obvious that at the location it must be noise and utter bedlam; smoke and fire and death. I was still on the phone talking to Ted, who was annoyed that he was unable to watch a web cast on his work computer, when I suddenly gasped and cried, "Oh my God, oh no, no, no!" One of the towers had just collapsed and crashed to the street below in a deadly rain of smoke, flames and steel.

Suddenly I just didn’t want to watch it alone, so I hurried across the street to my neighbor and writing friend Dana’s house. She pushed open the door and put her arms around me. "I knew it would be you, when I heard the knock" she said. "Come- we’ll get through this together.
So we sat on the sofa, holding hands, as the second tower slowly, almost gracefully, collapsed in upon itself and joined its fellow in history.

Now, a few hours later, there are two smoking stumps where the World Trade Center towers used to be, the pentagon is in flames and the world will never be the same. The president is in Louisiana, maybe going to a Nebraska bunker because they don’t think it’s safe for him to be in the White House. It, along with the State department, has been evacuated. Hell, half of the United States has been evacuated! The entire North American continent is shut down- borders on alert, all airline traffic in North America is grounded: federal, state and even local government buildings are either closed or on high alert. Great Britain just announced that all civil flights are being grounded there, so who knows if something is going on across the ocean too.

The images are surreal. We see the streets around the World Trade Center complex looking like a scene of nuclear winter, with everything coated in debris, dust and ash. The Manhattan bridge is empty on the inbound side, and outbound is 4 lanes of people walking, shocked and dirty, trying to get home. And all of the video is silent- no screams or sirens or crying, just the quiet voices of the news reporters telling us that the firefighters and EMT’s can’t even get to the scene to try to rescue people because of the debris piled so high.
Here in Columbus, the mayor has appealed for calm. In a way, it seems too silly. Why not be calm? What is there to get excited about? How seriously do we take ourselves here? No one is going to be crashing a hijacked airplane into Columbus Ohio, for goodness sake! But then I remember that no one in Oklahoma City thought that they would ever be a terrorist’s target. And there was a 4th plane, believed hijacked, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Who knows where it was headed?!
In the meanwhile, what can I do? I called the Red Cross to see about donating blood, but all circuits are busy. So I watch the news, and call friends and family to see if they are watching the news. My sister Barbara was at home in Manhattan when it happened and has reported in fine, but shaken, because she knows people who work in the Trade Center.
Multiply that by a million, that’s how many people are probably wondering if someone they knew was in the Trade Center or on one of the 4 hijacked flights. Wondering if a loved one was killed in the explosion, or burned, or crushed by falling debris, or jumped from the 90th floor.
I got out the big military flag that the VFW gave Grandmother when Aunt Ruth died and hung it in front of the house. I have never used that flag before, since it’s about 12 feet long. I have a little 8-inch flag on a stick that I usually put in the flower bed out front on the 4th of July, but today seemed… bigger than that.
I called Steve’s school and asked if they were talking to the kids about this. Yes, they said, they sent the kids to their advisory groups and explained what has happened (if that’s possible!) and that the kids seem fine with it.
Well of course they are, I thought. They have no idea the scope of this thing! Sure, it’s awful that buildings got blown up, but they weren’t in them, so they won’t think it will have much of an impact on their lives. They can’t conceive of the danger of WW III starting from this, or that even if cool heads prevail and the president shows a restraint he never has before, this will change everything, forever. Tomorrow we Americans will wake up in a different world than the one we found today.

And then Steve came home, and his first words to me suggested he had thought about it more than I imagined.
"Mom, if they start drafting people to the army for this crazy war, I’m going to go to college to be a rocket scientist. Maybe I can invent a colony ship that can carry us smart people out into space where we can have peace. We’ll leave all the ones who start wars here, and in a while, maybe they’ll all kill themselves and we peaceful folks can come back."
From your lips to God’s ear, kid.
In Europe, and in Israel, people are used to having their bags searched everywhere they go. They expect to have metal detectors and checkpoints and to show passports and to regard every stranger as possible terrorist. They understand in Israel that at any moment the pizza shop they’re eating in or the club where they’re dancing or the bus stop where they’re waiting might become an instrument of death.
Here in America we have been insulated from most of that for so long, but that feeling of safety is over. It is now terrifyingly clear to everyone that at any moment, anywhere, someone who is willing to die in the attempt can cause terrible death and destruction, and there’s really nothing we can do to stop them.

I just wonder how long it will be until the movie comes out.