Remembering, Eight Years Later

A thought today to the souls lost that day and for the collective hurt endured by all. May prayer flags all over the planet flap a little harder sending their prayers to the universe.

As always, I will listen to the three songs that resonate the loudest for me – Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Grand Central Station, Lucy Kaplansky’s Land of the Living and Alan Jackson’s Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).

Stranded away from loved ones, in North Carolina on the business of books, I remember the other folks in the same situation at the Spring Hill Suites. Gathered around the breakfast room tv set, just watching, not talking…wondering when we’d be able to get home….later that week, trying to get our business done, sleepwalking through it. Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Cary, Durham, visiting nice booksellers in nice towns, talking about everything and nothing and wondering what it all meant.

Finally, almost a week later, being able to catch Amtrak home, 15 hours on a train getting more delayed each hour we were on it. I remember reading two books – cheap thrill mysteries. My seat mate was on his way to New York – he was one of the original engineers on the towers, rolled-up blueprints in his hands, opening them, showing me where he thought people might be – still with hope that there were people to be found. Nobody’s brain was totally wrapped around the thought of most of the tower dwellers now being merely dust. Arriving at 30th St Station in Philly at 1 am with my best friend there to meet me.

Everyone was nice to each other. Nothing was too much trouble. Let’s Roll was a mantra that rose out of a Pennsylvania field.Young people enlisted, even NFL players. They started playing baseball again, men in pinstripes lining the base paths for ceremonies and remembrances, grown tough men with tears running down their cheeks as they watched waving flags carried by cops and firefighters…the finest and the bravest…God Bless America in the 7th inning of every game. Everyone remembered how much they loved their country and that people continue to die defending it…or die just because they live here. We must go on, everyone said, or THEY will WIN….

It seems like yesterday and it seems like a lifetime ago, too. A lot of people aren’t very nice to each other anymore. Everything is too much trouble. Nobody trusts anybody. The economy is dust, there are no jobs to be had and everyone still lives in terror – but of not finding a job or losing the one they have. There is hatred and noise and division in all the ranks. Frightening climates are taking shape – the scientific kind, the political kind, the social kind.

I wish for the unity that everyone felt for a couple of weeks those eight years ago, but we’re farther apart than ever. It it maddening. It is madness.

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