Sept. 11: Memory and Unpredictability

        There are many ways to mark time.  Some do it in terms of decades or important events, like weddings or birthdays or graduations.  There are also the dates of catastrophic events, such as FDR’s statement on Dec. 7, 1941 as a “date which will live in infamy” when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. declared war on Japan.  People also remember where they were on Nov. 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Those dates shaped their respective generations.  Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, as well as the crash of Flight 93 in the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside, shaped mine. 

        As I ran through Colt State Park this morning, I was struck by how similar this morning was to the same date 16 years ago, a thousand miles apart.  Clear skies, cool and sunny, low humidity.  When I got home from my walk that morning, Nels was on the phone in his office and gestured for me to turn on the television in the bedroom across the hall.  The first tower was a smoking mess and then I watched another plane fly into the second tower.  I could only sit there on the edge of the bed and cry as the commentators tried to make sense of what was happening.  When I finally roused myself to go to work, everyone looked as shell-shocked as I felt. 

         It was clear from the very first plane crash that life was going to be forever changed and a deep feeling of dread lasted for months.  I had never, ever listened to talk radio, but found myself glued to NPR.  Steve Inskeep’s calm voice narrated the unfolding events each morning, and also provided glimmers of hope and moments of compassion even as the news remained dismal.   

For the first time in 16 years, I was caught by surprise this morning when I checked the date.  I often commemorated the date in my morning journal, but not always.  Here are a few excerpts from past years:

In 2002, my cousin, 42 at the time (younger than I am now), died suddenly of heart failure during the first week of September.  It clearly felt like too much to deal with post-Sept. 11 mania:

I feel like I’ve been riding this torrent of media overload the entire week prior to this day, and now it will be even worse.  I don’t understand this.  I don’t want to relive that day nor the weeks that followed.  Why do others want to do so? ...I still remember the shock, I remember the numbness of the day…Plus I’m dealing with my own grief about David’s death.  It’s not that I have cried.  I mostly have felt numb, again.  I keep thinking wow, I’m over it as I go about my daily business, but I’m not.  I think about him and his family often.  I just see him in the coffin with all that makeup on.  He didn’t look asleep; he just looked dead. 

In 2005, I wrote:

Four years ago today.  It seems longer than that.  It seems like we have always lived under this administration in this fear-mongering world, where a constant state of worry holds us hostage.  But then I look out and see the geese flying by, and I feel okay again about the world.  It’s a temporary feeling and as fictional as the fear, I suppose.  The world is what it is.  It’s just so difficult to see that and not all the crap we put around it.

In 2010, it was simply: “Here it is, September 11.  Nine years later.  I remember.”

On the tenth anniversary, I wrote:

It’s 5:55 on the 10^th anniversary of Sept. 11.  I have done my mourning and thinking already this week.  I just hope that there is no new fresh disaster.  Like others, I have remembered where I was, how I thought the world changed at the time…I see how I’ve changed now…I see how proud we can be of all who worked together to perform rescue operations.  But I also see that the over-patriotism, the arrogance, the ethnocentrism in those American flags waving from cars.  It feels like overcompensating. 

In 2013, I wrote:

Ahh…I just realized what day it is.  The 12^th anniversary.  I’ve been thinking about it on the beautiful mornings, because I’ll never forget how great that walk was that day, how I felt so lucky and encouraged, and then how I came home and saw the television.  The impact of that day is still inscribed in my physical and emotional body like no other non-personal event. 

In 2014, six months after my friend Jenn died in a car accident, I wrote:

And now today is the anniversary of Sept. 11.  When I think about days that changed me, this is up there.  In a way, it’s like learning of Jenn’s death.  It seemed so impossible that something like that could happen, and at first the dread that something more could happen, and then the long years of war afterward, which was about fear and mourning, but also about coming together.  Maybe that’s what needs to happen for those of us grieving for Jenn. 

            We all have ways of remembering the events that demonstrate the world is not orderly or predictable.  These same events also, paradoxically, remind us that developing a sense of calm and stability supports our best selves and work (maybe even survival).  As a character from Elan Mastai’s book, All Our Wrong Todays, said, “There’s no such thing as the life you’re supposed to have.”  True, but we have a responsibility to be our best selves regardless in spite of—or because of—events like Sept. 11.

From Neil Young to Jesus: Resistance has a Big Tent

Oh Alabama

Can I see you and shake your hand

Make friends down in Alabama

I’m from a new land

I come to you and

See all this ruin

What are you doing?

Alabama, you have the rest of the union

To help you along

From “Alabama” from Harvest by Neil Young (released in 1972)

When the first chords of any Neil Young guitar lick—as recognizable as my mother’s voice—hit my ear, I perk up immediately.  In the middle of a show at the Narrows from their strong new album, Duende, a member of the Band of Heathens said, “This is for Jeff Sessions,” and ripped into “Alabama,” Neil Young’s lament about southern racism.   After the raucous applause which included a yell of “Fuck Trump,” to hearty crowd affirmation, the lead singer grinned.  And then he said, “Music is about bringing people together, not splitting them apart.”

I had a similar experience attending a live performance of The Moth at the Zeiterion Theatre last week.  It seemed like everyone I knew, from my mother-in-law to my yoga teacher to my colleagues to my students knew about this radio show/podcast except for me.  When I asked what it was about, they just said, “It’s so great!”  It turns out that the Moth is comprised of stories.  The host opened the show by noting that stories were for everyone, even in this acrimonious time.  Five people came onto the stage and shared 10 minute personal narratives of varying humor and pathos.   Even though Donald Trump played a major part in one of the stories, the point was not to praise or to denigrate; but simply to tell the story in which he was a character.

These experiences, along with listening to some of my favorite music this week (Avett Brothers, Frank Turner, Wailin’ Jennys, Mavis Staples and of course Hamilton), helped me understand and embrace the role I want to take in this divisive and scary time:  that of someone who brings people together.  I am not a moderate in my political beliefs: my lefthandedness and my leftist priorities are in harmony.  That said, I think it’s time to widen the tent. 

 It troubles me to make this kind of space in some ways.  For example, I never thought I would be cheering on billionaire Eli Broad, a pariah to public educators, except in his vocal opposition to Betsy DeVos.  I also wonder about those folks against abortion who name themselves as feminists.  Do we have to turn in our leftist credentials to include them in an anti-Trump movement?  It’s fine for us to question each other in ways to get each other to think, as in the women of color noting and critiquing the whiteness of the women’s march.  Where were white women in the Black Lives Matter movement, they ask?  I supported that, but I also felt a little queasy seeing it written across a white girl’s stomach at the Newport Folk Festival two years ago.  I have spoken to many white middle class women who don’t quite know what to do.  We don’t want to be colonialist, and we are not sure how to be activists and not speak for oppressed people instead of with them.   I hope this larger resistance will create space for all of us to feel comfortable talking and listening to each other. 

In this larger tent of resistance, I think of Jesus with the loaves and fishes, expanding who can be nourished.  We need the ranters who seem to be at the forefront right now, but we also need strategists and spaceholders.  How can we cultivate unlikely allies such as Eli Broad, anti-abortion feminists and radical people of color?  How about moderate conservatives in Congress who have been afraid to stand up to this administration and their leadership?  Do we all not at least agree that we want Trump and Pence out of the Oval Office?  Even as there may not be compromises on certain issues, I hope that inclusivity and peace can be the hallmarks of this resistance. 

Let’s remember:

-We are the majority.

-We want love and justice for all people.

-Politicians want votes and corporations want our business. 

That is, we have immense power.  Let’s use it.  Together.

The Politics of Friendship

“I am convinced people with opposing opinions politically cannot be friends.”

I was at the Women’s March in Providence when I checked Facebook and saw that post from one of my oldest friends.  I was excited to be at the rally with what turned out to be several thousand others—women, men, children, dogs and musicians of all ages and ethnicities.  Most had signs with clever sayings.  It was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm and sunny, and the feeling of dread I’d had since the election lifted.  If there were this many rallying in this small city, how many more were there across the nation (yes, Fox, even in the flyover states) and across the world?  The sense of community and shared energy was the perfect tonic for the toxicity of Trump’s Inauguration speech the day before.  

And then I saw that post from my friend, whom I’ll call Daren.  We have been friends since my freshman year of high school.  She introduced me to Planned Parenthood and Madonna’s first album, which we listened to all the time on her small boom box.  We made a lot of similar bad choices, especially when it came to boyfriends and overconsumption of alcohol.  Our friendship was off and on after high school, but when Facebook arrived, we reconnected and get together for coffee or lunch when I come back to Fort Wayne to visit family.   Daren is still the easygoing and generous person I remember from high school.  She is also much more conservative than I remembered.  To be fair, I did not realize how left-leaning I was until I went to college and felt like I finally understood how the world really works. 

Weirdly, our ideological differences have never come up when we are together, but are all too obvious on FB.  When I messaged Daren about her post, she said she had an argument with one of our mutual high school friends, a lefty like me, but also much more outspoken than I am.  It turns out their political differences turned personal, and what sounded like some long-simmering resentments came to the surface.  That made me wonder how political differences among friends and family members might not just be about politics, but something  a little deeper.  Feminists have always said that the personal is political, and I wonder if the reverse is not true as well.

Daren and I have some things in common—we both have been married to the same partner for over 20 years and are both subsequently devoted to our animals, although she is a dog person and I am a cat person.  However, our lives definitely took different trajectories, in that I chose to leave home for college and now live a thousand miles away, and she chose to stay in our hometown.  Our politics, values, and lifestyles are dissimilar.  So why do we maintain our friendship?  I think it’s because we knew each other when we were on our worst behavior in our teens and early 20’s.  Daren saw me at my most selfish and insecure, and I never remember her criticizing me for it (and she certainly had reason to).  I watched her engage in self-destructive behavior and tried to keep her from being too crazy. 

So, I am choosing to ignore her political posts, many of which I find hateful and offensive.  I try not to post those kinds of messages from my side, not because I don’t want to offend her and my other conservative friends, but because I think of Henry David Thoreau’s quote: “The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.” 

I will continue to actively engage in resistance to the Trump agenda and administration.  I will also keep Thoreau in mind and attempt to be strong AND tender in my words and actions.  Long-lasting, healthy relationships are worth keeping if we still value one another, even as we have different values.