Party on, man

The morning news meteorologist let me know that Spring officially begins tomorrow (tonight) at 12:14 am, making this the final day of winter. He also said our high for today will be around 81F. What a crazy year for weather.

Saturday was St. Patrick's Day -- a fact I nearly forgot because we had so much else going on (more on that in a minute). But I did manage to get everyone dressed in a little bit of green, even if only a tiny hair bow. Tres (who apparently didn't remember the holiday from years past) was concerned / confused about why "Sir Patrick" wanted to pinch people who don't like green; eventually she came to the conclusion that evil leprechauns make him do it, so oh well. We'll all just wear the green and try not to worry about it too much. There must be a lot of things in life that seem, to a 4yo, equal parts arbitrary and vaguely menacing -- but you just have to soldier on through them (or "shoulder on through," if you're Tres) with Mom and Dad by your side.

Speaking of soldiering, I had one of my occasional bouts of premeditated lunacy on Saturday: I hosted a kids' party. For no good reason. No birthday, no milestone, no nothing. I've done this before.

*SIGH!*

Here's the problem: Uno and Dos both have lots of friends at school whom they would like to invite over to play. In theory, that sounds fine to me; what's one more kid running around? But in practice, since none of their friends live within walking distance of our house, that involves logistical planning with other kids' moms -- a task which makes my heart shrivel into a tight little fist of anxiety. I don't know why, but it does; let's just agree that I'm broken and move on. So a few times every week, Uno and/or Dos will beg to have this friend over or that friend come play. Uno will often offer to make the arrangements herself (though I know I'll still have to confirm it with the other mom, so I might as well do it all myself). I always put them off. "Not today, but maybe soon. I don't know. We'll think about it." The girls are not fooled; they know I have no intention of following up on anything. I feel increasingly harried and guilty; they feel increasingly frustrated and resentful; finally the dam bursts and I say something stupid like, "Fine, we'll throw a party! You can each invite X number of people."

Let's see, which might be more stressful and out of my comfort zone, a one-on-one playdate or a party of 10 excitable, squeally kids...? ::FOREHEAD SMACK:: (But at least with a party, you can send paper invitations with the only RSVP option an email address!)

So we had a party. Three of Uno's friends and one of Dos's (the other two couldn't make it) came over Saturday evening and we all made Shrinky-Dinks (technically Grafix Shrink Film; I have come to like that brand better) and ate pizza and "watched a movie" (which is code for "went upstairs to the girls' rooms instead to play loud / wild / messy games of Hide & Seek"). I think everyone had fun. I hope so, because I'm not hosting another party again for a long time.

Ugh. I don't know why I do these things to myself, but I have definitely recognized a pattern in my life of making grand gestures to overcome trivial anxieties:

As a teenager, I simultaneously craved and feared the looming independence of college. I wanted to get away from the town I'd lived in nearly all my life, so what did I do? Apply to a school a few hours away, or maybe in a neighboring state? Nope. I applied to just one place: A liberal arts college for women 2,000 miles away in a state I'd never visited and where I knew not a single soul. And then I got accepted, so I went. It scared the crap out of me -- I don't know if I could possibly get more out of my comfort zone than that! -- but I soldiered on through (and had an amazing experience).

After college, I moved back home to live with family (first my parents, and then my sister and her family) while I figured out the next steps of my life. Ultimately, I decided I needed to strike out on my own. I had a great job at the time; I could have simply found my own apartment in the same or a nearby town and continued living the good life -- but no. I quit my job, loaded up all my worldly belongings and moved to a large Midwestern city to live with my BFF (so at least I knew someone that time!) (and that turned out wonderfully, too).

I am a timid little mouse whose life is punctuated by erratic bursts of derring-do. (Perhaps it doesn't take a lot of daring for most people to host a children's party, but for me it counts!) I wish I could be more consistently ... uh, normal, LOL -- for my kids' sake, at least -- rather than someone who slides from one extreme to the other, but I yam what I yam. I always have been.

Oh well. My girls will need something to talk to their therapists about when they get older. ;-)


~RCH~

Hey, remember me?

To celebrate Daylight Savings Time (and because I stayed home sick from church today, woo-hoo-hoo-wah-ah-ah), I thought I might try to catch up on my blog. (And speaking of church, I think if I ever get fired as Primary President I'll have waaaay more mental energy for writing. So if you've missed me, you could think up some spectacular scandal and pass it on to my ecclesiastical leaders...!) (Not that I don't love it; I do. The kids are fantastic and it provides me with a creative outlet. But it doesn't leave me with much left for anything else.) Anyway, here I am again.

Tornado

As I'm sure you all know, an EF-4 tornado hit our town ~a week and a half ago. I had seen weather reports the evening before indicating that we might have severe weather during the night, so I made sure the NOAA weather radio was plugged in and had fresh backup batteries. My cell phone usually powers down at night, but I made sure to keep it turned on and plugged into its charger. I woke up at 3am to use the bathroom and turned on the tv to check the local station when I got back. The storms hadn't gotten to us yet, but they looked bad so I stayed awake. At 4am, DH (who was working overnight) called me to make sure I was up and aware and had what I needed. Thirty minutes later, our Tornado Watch turned into a screeching Warning (thanks, NOAA!) so I roused the four sleeping girls, made sure everyone had shoes on, and we went down to the basement to wait it out. Uno had her tornado kit handy -- a duffle bag full of DVDs and a portable player -- so the girls were more excited than scared this time.

Frankly, I was annoyed. 4:30am on a school day is not the ideal time to have a tornado drill -- and that's what most of them are: Drills. Nothing ever happens. (Well, I guess there was that whole tree falling on our porch incident last year, but the local meteorologists said afterward that storm only had strong straight winds, nothing tornadic.) I expected that we'd get some pounding rain or hail, a lot of dramatic bluster, and then the whole thing would be over and I'd be unable to get the girls back to sleep before they had to get up at 7am to get ready for school.

We sat through a few rounds of the sirens, waiting for our Tornado Warning to expire. The power flickered once, but remained on. The girls alternately argued over which movie to watch and pretended to be camping.

DH called me at about five minutes to 5am, right after the sirens quit. "RCH, are you guys okay? The entire back of the hospital is GONE. There used to be a wall there and now there isn't -- the roof, the wall, they're gone. I'm all right. I've got to go."

We were fine at home. At our end of town, less than two miles away from DH, you could hardly tell it had stormed. The ground was wet, but not a bush or branch or leaf looked out of place. We had no damage at all.

I sent the girls back to bed and settled in to watch the news coverage. None of the news people had made it to the scene yet, but reports were coming in of incredible damage from the commercial district around Walmart, through residential neighborhoods behind it, and up to the hospital. DH's uncle posted on Facebook that his good friend (and the realtor who had helped us buy our house) was trapped under the rubble of what used to be her home. The CBS affiliate (which broadcasts from a neighboring state; our most local station is ABC) reported fairly early, before anyone else would confirm the news, that there were fatalities. One, then three....

I hoped at first, when it was still dark, that people were exaggerating. Midwest storms are amazing and powerful and even incidental damage can seem bigger than it may actually have been in hindsight (see: tree limb on porch). DH and his uncle (no offense) like to tell a good story; maybe it wasn't really so bad.

The sun began to come up. The news anchors reported that our town's schools would be closed for the day. An hour or so later, they announced school would be closed for the rest of the week. News trucks arrived on scene and broadcast the destruction: Whole buildings, houses, neighborhoods gone. By the end of the day, the coroner had confirmed six fatalities (a couple days ago the number rose to seven as one more person succumbed to injuries sustained from the tornado). DH, whose 12-hour shift was scheduled to end at 8am, stayed until noon as people were brought in, evaluated, and distributed by ambulance or air to other regional hospitals. (The patients who had been in the hospital at the time had all been moved into interior hallways right before it hit; nobody at the hospital was injured.)

I haven't taken any pictures of the tornado damage. The roads to those areas are blocked off except to the families who lived there, clean up crews, and volunteers; no looky-loos allowed! But a quick Google image search turns up these:


This house belonged to friends of DH (the husband of the woman in the front was his high school golf coach; their son was his classmate). E&P, this is where we went swimming last summer.



This was our realtor's house. It's a miracle she's alive, but she made it out of the rubble with only bruises. Some of her personal belongings were found later in the parking lot of a Catholic school more than 60 miles away.



An aerial view of one neighborhood. Note the trees along the middle right edge of the photo; they are FLATTENED.



If you can't laugh, you'll cry (though I think many people have done both). Painted on the side of a tornado-ravaged house (next to a random prosthetic leg): "For Sale — Fixer Upper." (I couldn't find a big enough picture of it, but after painting that, the woman wrote, "Big Blow-Out Sale!" Har-har.


It has been an emotional week for the town since the tornado (what's the opposite of hyperbole? Hypobole?). We have seen lots of stories of loss and destruction (both here and elsewhere in the Midwest) on the one hand, but also so many incidents of kindness and generosity and human good. People from around the region and around the country have stepped in to help the families affected by the disaster. I think the whole town has felt the power of the collective prayers. It has been amazing and so heartening to see.


And now for some random musings that are not about tornadoes.


I Love This Commercial

How's this for something soothing after all the storm talk? I love all the Sherwin-Williams paint chip commercials; the colors are so bright and the animation so charming. They make me happy. :-)




The Love Song of RCH Prufrock

Browsing my bookshelf a couple months ago, I came across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems. I haven't looked at or thought about those words in a very long time. I felt almost giddy; it was like running into an old friend (which those of you who love books, and maybe more especially poetry, will understand). I've always loved -- and probably over-identified with -- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but when I read through this stanza I grabbed DH and said, "There, see? This is why I'm not a great communicator. Small talk, big talk, whatever; it's too much. Right here. This is the key to understanding me." (Or really probably any neurotic introvert.)

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
    That is not it, at all.'

And DH, who may know a lot about birds (and sports and science and medicine and the lyrics to The Facts of Life and other '80s sitcom themes) but lacks confidence in his literary interpretation skills, handed the book back to me and said, "I will never understand women."

Oh well. Serves him right for any of the sports metaphors he's ever used.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Words Cuatro Can Say

The baby is 16 months old and slowly accumulating some words:

Bye-bye
Dad
Mom
[Dos]
[Uno]
Teeth (a forceful and heavily aspirated Teee to indicate she wants to brush her teeth)
Woof
Meow
Uh-oh
Cute
Thank you (pronounced adorably as Gankooo)
More-more-more (so greedy! I need to teach her Please)
Poor-poor (to indicate sadness, since we say "Poor, poor Cuatro!" when she's hurt or otherwise ornery)

There are probably more, but that's all I can think of -- and now it is nearly midnight (though it doesn't feel like it, stupid Daylight Savings Time!). I began blogging this morning; I should probably quit while I'm ahead and hit the Publish button or I'll never do it and my post will linger in draft form for a few months before I decide it's such old news it isn't worth printing.

I will try to be more consistent in my blogging from here on out -- though seriously, it'll be an uphill battle until I'm "fired" from my church responsibilities, so get on those salacious rumors! Stat! ;-)


~RCH~

Hey Nonny

I haven't given up blogging, but obviously I haven't been writing as much in the last year (with the exception of August, LOL). My life feels exhausting, so at the end of most days I'm too worn out to rehash it all! And then, of course, I get stuck after big events: We went to Utah the last weekend in October -- which included Cuatro's first birthday and the awesomeness that is Halloween in a neighborhood full of young families -- so I'm reluctant to blog about anything else before I've told those tales and posted those pictures. And since I haven't yet, nothing else gets written. D'oh.

But sigh not so! I had a pleasant kick in the pants this week from one of the girls at the blog Hey Nonny. She asked if I would submit a guest post for this week's Friday Feature, and I felt too flattered to refuse her. Please head over there to check it out; I hope you'll enjoy what I wrote. :-)


~RCH~

Happy Birthday to Tres

This week we celebrated a milestone: Tres's fourth birthday, and the first magic (aka golden) birthday in our family, defined as the year one's age coincides with the date she was born. Uno will have hers at 13; Dos will have hers at 26; Cuatro has to wait until she turns 29. (DH and I had ours at ages 3 and 7, respectively, but I guess we didn't know how cool it was at the time. I actually spent most of my 7th birthday stuck in the middle of the desert somewhere between Portland and Boise next to our broken down 15-passenger van. As I recall, it was neither magical nor golden. But I digress.)

Because it was her once-in-a-lifetime magic birthday, I wanted to give her something special -- but I didn't know what. Something lovely and meaningful and important, but something a newly minted 4yo would be excited about. Also something not too pricey, LOL. (In a family of this size, we have to consider precedent!) I actually finagled an afternoon by myself and wandered Toys R Us for a couple hours (this after trolling the web every nap time for days in a row), but nothing felt like the right thing. The giant, elaborately decorated solid wood doll house would have been nice, but the $300 price tag was out of my league. Dress-ups might have been cool -- and you'd think I could have found some good ones, given that her birthday falls in the month of Halloween -- but everything they had looked flimsy and cheap (while simultaneously not being as cheap as you'd hope). In the end, I came home slightly unsatisfied with a plastic Dora the Explorer castle plus a few extra figurines to go with it. Not grandiose, not important, not something so special she'll remember it for years to come....

Of course, one of the things I've always loved about Tres, ever since she could talk, is her vocal and exaggerated gratitude. Every present she opened -- the Dora castle, the off-brand princess Barbies from her sisters, clothes from DH's uncles, an art kit from SIL -- she declared the best ever, her most favoritest thing in the whole wide world, a real life dream come true! "Oh, how did you know?" she'd ask while clasping the gift to her chest. "I love it with all my heart! This is the best birthday I ever had!" And because of some family drama that the girls (except for maybe eavesdroppy Uno) know nothing about, we got to have several birthday celebrations over the course of three days (certain people refuse to be in the same place with other certain people, and some otherwise uninvolved people feel compelled to pick sides and meanwhile I'm just trying to be Switzerland and let innocent little Tres share her day with all the people and it's just a big fat mess). The upshot of which is that just about everybody came away thinking that their gift was her favorite because they didn't hear her say it about every other gift. But really it's true; she loves each of them the most, like a mom loves her kids: Not the most in a ranking from one to whatever, but the most in terms of capacity. It would be impossible for her to love them each even a smidgen more than she does because her heart is full to the point of exploding.

Kaboom. :-)

We topped off the days of celebration with a series of photo shoots, which does fit the meaningful bill a little more than a plastic castle. Usually my girls hate when I try to take their pictures, but Tres allowed me to do it (and even asked if she could do it again after our first session!) because it meant she could wear lipstick (aka chapstick or clear gloss). The photo up top and these below are a few of my favorites (the pics of her in the pink fairy dress and the white dress were taken a few days before her birthday; the ones of her in blue were taken the day after).










And one of all my girls, just for fun:




~RCH~

Grrrrrr

We're heading to my hometown next month for a quick visit, and on the agenda is a family portrait. I feel very self-conscious of my post-4-babies body and don't really want to be immortalized with my belly still looking pregnant, a year after the last delivery (which it currently does). I tried googling fashion tips this afternoon, and came across an article that promised Five Outfits to Disguise A Food Baby!

Except that it came illustrated with images like this:



Seriously? Seriously. I don't think that woman even has a stomach, let alone an ounce of fat. Grrrrrr.

And waaaaah.

Anybody have any real advice? I don't know what to call my body type; I don't think I'm pear shaped because it's not my entire bottom half that's big (I don't think), just my stomach. That would make me an apple, I guess, but then most apples are presumed to have a big chest and I, sadly, do not. It really is just this enormous 6mo-pregnant-looking belly I want to hide.

Ugh, it's all so depressing. And depressing that I care. But I do. :-P


~RCH~

Revisiting Randomland

1. I took the girls today to our hospital's Teddy Bear Care Fair -- it's designed to familiarize children with the hospital and what goes on there so they'll be less afraid if they ever need treatment. They each brought a stuffed animal (a dog, elephant and bunny, respectively) and went through the various stations: Intake / triage; to the lab to have their animals' "blood" drawn; respiratory and physical therapy; surgery -- where Uno's dog had the hole in his tail stitched up! -- and x-ray, where all the animals had their pictures made. Here, for instance, is [a very bad scan of] Dos's elephant, Elli:



Everything looks great except for the lack of bones and the calcified heart. Otherwise, though, a-okay!

They all enjoyed themselves. I think Uno felt a little too old for the pretense (checking the animals with a stethoscope, etc), but she was tired of waiting for me to fix her dog (which she asked me to do months ago; I'm not sure where my sewing kit is) and the nurse just stitched it up lickity split. Dos seemed to think it was all just fun. Tres took it very seriously, which was super cute.


2. I've given up soda. Sort of. I've stopped buying it for the house, anyway -- I'll still order it at a restaurant, or if, say, I came over to your house and you offered me a [case of] Diet Dr. Pepper I would graciously accept, because that's only basic good manners, right? Yes. But I don't have any more cans here, and haven't for most of the week. It's been a rough week. The funny thing is, I seem not to miss the caffeine so much as I miss the coldness or the crack and fizz of opening a new can first thing in the morning or the having something in my hand to sip on all day long. Drinking soda apparently kept my bored eating in check; now I may have to take up gum chewing. Hmmm.

I would really, really love a Dr. Pepper right now. Waaaah.


3. Did I mention that the older girls are playing soccer this fall? Dos is on a grey team; Uno is on an orange team. I never wanted to be a soccer mom, but I think the experience is good for them. I will post action shots if I can ever get any. So far I've been too distracted on the sidelines keeping Tres out of trouble / Cuatro safe in her stroller (usually the same thing -- poor Cuatro) to take any decent pictures.


4. All of us are sick with a cold. It's very annoying.


5. I am in love with the song "Mr. Blue" by Catherine Feeney. Too often I feel like I could be its subject. I try to be vigilant, to make sure I'm not inching toward melancholy that might affect (infect?) my girls -- but then I wonder if the vigilance is just as bad because it keeps me self-absorbed and focused on the thing I want to avoid. It's a conundrum.

*Sigh.* I'll figure it out. And in the meantime, you should love Catherine Feeney too.



~RCH~

Dispatches from the past

Ten years ago, I was a newlywed living in Kansas City and working a desk job for TWA (the even then soon-to-be-defunct Trans World Airlines); one of my best friends was also a newlywed, but living in the hometown of her Scottish husband, near Glasgow. I realized yesterday that since I'm a pack rat even digitally, I probably still had our correspondence from 9/11. I don't think this is all -- I probably wrote her other emails from my work account -- but this is some of what I still have, with names and personal bits redacted, of course.


TO: BeckleTheFreckle
FROM: RCH
SUBJECT: Terrorist Attacks
DATE: September 11, 2001, 12:38 PM

Beckle,

I suppose you've heard by now about the terrorist attacks in the U.S.? I got most of my news this morning from the BBC web site because all the American news sources (Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) were overloaded with web traffic and I couldn't get through.

I actually watched the second World Trade Center tower get smacked by the plane.... I turned on the Today Show as I got ready for work this morning; the first plane hit while I was in the shower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were talking about that breaking news story as I got dressed -- acting on the assumption that it was an accident, which is rare but has happened before to tall buildings. (The Empire State Building got hit in the '30s, apparently, and the Pan Am Building accidentally got clipped by a helicopter in the '60s.) And as they were talking about that and showing live film of the hole in the building, and the smoke billowing out, a larger plane came into the camera's view and deliberately plowed straight into the other tower and exploded.

I had to go to work then, but I listened to the news on the radio all the way there and all morning at my desk. The two towers have since collapsed, as I'm sure you've heard; the Pentagon got hit by another plane; a plane crashed near (but not at) Camp David in Pennsylvania. All flights throughout the entire country are canceled for the forseeable future -- at least for the rest of the day and likely for some of tomorrow. International flights are being diverted to Canada. Flights in the air were told to land at the nearest available airport. The airport here is going crazy with stranded passengers, apparently. I don't work at the airport proper; my office is at the airplane overhaul maintenance base about half a mile south. We're still open, but security is tightened; I guess they're not letting anybody in.

I'm not supposed to play on the internet except at lunch time, but I've been checking the news sites all morning anyway. I hope they don't mind. I think they'll understand, under the circumstances. Two of the four planes that were hijacked were from American Airlines, the company that now owns TWA (the other two were from United). A couple hundred people are dead just from those plan crashes; no word yet on how many were killed at the World Trade Center, though 50,000 people work there so the numbers could be pretty high.

Damn. All of this is pretty hard to fathom.

[Personal stuff follows]


~RCH~




TO: RCH
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: RE: Terrorist Attacks
DATE: September 11, 2001, 1:50 PM

RCH,

I just happened to be sitting around and decided to turn on the tv at about 2 o' clock and I was watching Scooby Doo and for some reason I decided to flip channels and they showed the world trade center on fire...it was horrifying. I saw the second plane crash into it and watched the whole hour while people ran away from the debris and eventual collapse of both buildings live. It is scary to say the least.

I don't even like thinking about the possible outcome...all these insane thoughts racing around my head (and being depressed already doesn't help a damn bit) about never seeing you and K2 or my family again. I was online a bit earlier talking to RW when I got your letter and she started freaking out saying things about her brother and her boyfriend getting drafted....

[Personal stuff follows]


~BeckleTheFreckle~




TO: RCH & Others
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: Hope
DATE: September 13, 2001, 6:45 AM

RCH & Others,

I just finished watching a special changing of the guard this morning on the BBC and it was good to hear the National Anthem again. :)

I can't tell you how the events of the last few days have affected me so far away from home and most of the people I love in America. I'm sure you're tired of the saturation of reports, so feel free to trash this if you want. Still, it's good to see hope shining through all this darkness. There is some good to be made out of every tragedy.

To those back home, I love you so much and I miss you. It never seems to hit as hard as times like these then you realize life is so short and fragile, but there is nothing to be afraid of as long as we trust in each other and do the best we can. Take care of yourselves and know that I'm thinking of you all the time.

To my family and friends here in Scotland, thank you for taking such good care of me. It means a lot.

I'll leave you with this scripture that my Mom has hanging in our house: "Fear not what man can do, for I shall be with you forever and ever."


Love Always,
~BeckleTheFreckle~




TO: BeckleTheFreckle
FROM: RCH
SUBJECT: Random Dispatch from the KC Correspondent
DATE: September 17, 2001, 4:47 PM

Beckle,

Happy Monday the week after! ...Life is beginning to return to normal here (for those of us, at least, who live hundreds of miles from the terrorist attacks and who didn't know anyone who died in them). The news has finally toned down its coverage of the disaster; it's still the only news they report, but they've given up the round-the-clock business and have returned us to our regularly scheduled programs. Which is such a freaking relief! There are only so many facts they can report, and beyond that it's all horrible "human interest" stories of people who lost loved ones. Wives whose husbands called from the hijacked planes to say goodbye, or firemen who lost their whole company in the rescue effort.

I saw one interview with the CEO of some accounting firm (I think) whose offices were near the top of the WTC -- he had been at his daughter's school that morning, so he was the only one of 700 employees accounted for. He broke down in the interview, sobbing: "Seven hundred people! I was their leader, and now I'm the only one left." He could barely speak. "I'm responsible to the families of seven hundred people. They're all dead. All of them." That was the most disturbing news interview I saw, because I'm not used to seeing men cry at all, and he was just a wreck. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for him and all of those families. I tried to clean up my face when DH came home from that day's rotations -- he already didn't know what to do with me when I had dainty little tear-stained cheeks from other news stories, so I knew he'd be at a loss with my big puffy eyes and red, runny nose -- but I couldn't do it. I was too far gone. And the interview was over by the time he walked in the door, anyway, so he couldn't see what had upset me so much and I was in no state to explain it articulately. Poor husband-o-mine. We decided then that I should not watch the news by myself anymore, and even with DH around we'll only watch it if they're discussing details of the investigation.

Ugh. What a week it's been.

K2 and I got our hair done on Saturday! That was fun. Though I felt guilty all week leading up to it, because I didn't know how I wanted it cut (a safe, traditional chin-length bob? Which DH thinks is too short. Or maybe branch out into a new style? Scary!) but I felt so completely shallow for worrying about hair when there were so many people with real problems. But then I'd feel guilty for grieving for all those people in NY and DC because I didn't know any of them.... I felt like I was trying to usurp their grief because I was (again) too shallow to have any of my own. Does that make sense? Because really, what business do I have crying? The attacks didn't affect me directly. My life is a freaking bed of roses. I was having a very difficult time reconciling the sadness and horror I felt with all the banal little details of going on with life.

Anyway. I promise I'm going to stop interjecting all my stories with stuff about the attacks. On with the show!

[Personal stuff follows]


~RCH~




TO: RCH
FROM: BeckleTheFreckle
SUBJECT: Ramblings
DATE: September 18, 2001, 9:17 AM

RCH,

I must commiserate with you on behalf of the terrorist stuff. DH had to impose a news ban on me too because I got scared on him Wednesday night, I started crying and saying that I was never going to see my family and friends again and we'd never be able to go back to Utah...I couldn't get over seeing the people listening to answering machine messages from their family, and I saw that guy too who was saying he was responsible for everyone and started crying. It broke my heart. It made me want to be around Americans so badly, it made me want to have a flag to fly. It made me want to be able to join in with everyone in feeling sorry and I can't do that. It's been so hard for me over here without anyone to bitch to. People feel bad, but they don't quite understand how scary and close to home it all is. I was checking my e-mail the next day and RW was online and she was freaking out about everyone getting drafted...oh dear. It was a bad week.

The only thing that gave me any comfort was watching any BBC program that had memorial services and played the national anthem. It probably seemed pretty pathetic to passers by me standing with my hand over my heart singing it at the top of my lungs, but it made me feel better.

But it's like a train wreck, you know? You don't want to look, but you just can't tear yourself away. I'm glad the news is calming down a bit. The media is mostly a blessing, but not when it's mass-hysteria inducing.

[Personal stuff follows]


~BeckleTheFreckle~




Ten years later. The death toll was thankfully lower than it could have been, and our armed forces are still staffed by amazing volunteers. Beckle & her DH eventually moved back to the U.S.; my job at TWA became redundant in February 2002 when the merger with American Airlines went through, and I was laid off (though I quickly found work as an assistant at a patent law firm). The horror gradually receded, and life went on.

I watched a lot of the coverage last week leading up to the anniversary -- lots of Where Are They Now? stories about people in iconic photos that I had never seen because I couldn't bear it at the time -- and I watched the service in NYC on Sunday. It all still makes me cry, and still makes me feel ... guilty, I guess, because I haven't "earned" my grief the way the mourners at Ground Zero have. I didn't lose anyone or anything but a belief in the invincibility of my country. Still. It breaks my heart. I have a bad habit of trying to imagine myself in the lives of others. I like to vicariously try on others' experiences, see how they fit, wonder how I would react to what someone else has been through. While empathy may be a good quality in some situations, it's useless here. Completely useless. I'd like to think my "mourning with those who mourn" (to borrow a scriptural phrase) actually means something, but nothing changes the terribleness of that day.


~RCH~