Remembrances
Today is my favorite cousin's birthday but three years ago it took on another, very unfestive meaning.
For what it's worth, Happy Birthday, Kathy. I will never forget that some very good things have happened on September 11th, despite whatever else may have followed. It is through our relationship over our lifetimes that I have some idea what it must mean to have a sister.
~*~*~*~*~*
I recalled my personal experience of 9/11/01 in last year's blog entry. It still gives me a bit of a chill when I realize that I must have woke from my sleep just as the first aircraft was hitting the North Tower.
The rest of that day--that whole week--was unreal, viewed through a veil of physical and spiritual pain. Even here, a continent away, we felt the blow personally and staggered under it.
We have survived and passed through our grief into a new world, a darker, less secure world. I was just thinking, as I climbed the steps to work yesterday and fumbled for my key, that it has been three years since I didn't need my key to come on watch, three years that our building has been locked down. Like most anniversaries of the sort, it seems both longer and shorter than the actual time. The events on those days are so strongly etched in our memories that they still seem fresh, yet the world has changed so much it is hard to clearly recall the time before airport screeners and closed-circuit cameras.
Now the paranoia seems almost natural.
But behind the new normalcy are the spectres of smoking holes in the earth and losses that are felt fresh with every anniversary.
For what it's worth, Happy Birthday, Kathy. I will never forget that some very good things have happened on September 11th, despite whatever else may have followed. It is through our relationship over our lifetimes that I have some idea what it must mean to have a sister.
~*~*~*~*~*
I recalled my personal experience of 9/11/01 in last year's blog entry. It still gives me a bit of a chill when I realize that I must have woke from my sleep just as the first aircraft was hitting the North Tower.
The rest of that day--that whole week--was unreal, viewed through a veil of physical and spiritual pain. Even here, a continent away, we felt the blow personally and staggered under it.
We have survived and passed through our grief into a new world, a darker, less secure world. I was just thinking, as I climbed the steps to work yesterday and fumbled for my key, that it has been three years since I didn't need my key to come on watch, three years that our building has been locked down. Like most anniversaries of the sort, it seems both longer and shorter than the actual time. The events on those days are so strongly etched in our memories that they still seem fresh, yet the world has changed so much it is hard to clearly recall the time before airport screeners and closed-circuit cameras.
Now the paranoia seems almost natural.
But behind the new normalcy are the spectres of smoking holes in the earth and losses that are felt fresh with every anniversary.
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