Month: September 2019

View with a Room

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I basically knew what expect. I’ve done this before.

I’m always thrown off by the white noise machines, I forget they’re a part of this. I don’t use them in my daily life, so it’s always a bit jarring to my techie soul with the strong urge to adjust the volume slider and turn down the trim knob on a soundboard. But here, they’re welcomed.

I noticed the room was ordered, yet minimalistic when I walked in. Their decorating style was eclectic chic and it worked. The randomness was oddly calming. I couldn’t tell you what half the knick knacks were, their shapes too difficult to describe, yet their solid colors appeared to belong in the room. The large white oversized couch didn’t overwhelm the small room, but reminded me of my friend’s couch – the kind that you sink into, like a big hug. The corner room was lit by the sun with big floor to ceiling windows that reminded me of a boutique hotel I stayed at in Berlin. The room was surrounded by my two favorite trees: crepe myrtles and little gems – a dwarf version of the magnolia. A small secret garden of sorts, secluded by HIPPA and plants that don’t grow up north. A cup of tea and a good book would have been the icing on the cake, but that wasn’t on the menu today.

It was then I realized I saw this all in a dream awhile ago.

In some very rare instances, things I’ve dreamt have been played out on the stage of real life. It usually was about boys of the past and I can’t remember the last time this happened.

I’m where I’m suppose to be, I imagine.

11 September 2001, Revisited

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Since the attacks, outside of its anniversary date, I hadn’t dwelled on it much. I didn’t arrive in New York City until 2014; this place was unfamiliar to me until then.

In a tradition I started, when a niece turns 16, we go on a trip together. When my niece Aimee said she wanted to go to NYC, I was completely on board. My historic and nerdy soul wanted to drag this poor jock to all the museums, but I let her choose what she wanted to do.

She wanted to hit all the main touristy places, which was fine. And then she added, “I want to go to the 9/11 Museum.”

The what? I did a double take.

She was in the womb when the towers fell. Why on earth would she want to see that when she had no experience with that dark, dark day? Then I realized that she had never lived in a pre-9/11 world. She didn’t know anything prior to that, like I had never known a world without microwave ovens. Her entire life was lived in this shadow of the falling towers.

She was insistent about it, and so we went.

It was the last stop on our trip, after a French breakfast in the financial district, we got in the long line. I had no idea what to expect.

It was like a tomb, because it was. Everyone talked in hushed voices, if they talked at all. Every so often you’d pass someone sobbing quietly. We walked down the staircase that so many survivors did. It looked like it was hit by a bomb. We paused at the blue memorial wall – behind it was the final resting place of the many victims and first responders. That was difficult to take in.

We sat in a room that projected pictures of people who died in the tragedy, with a bit of their life story. We sat there awhile, my niece completely spellbound – drawn in by these ordinary folks, caught up in history. It was personal.

We walked through the main exhibit, where it walks you through the day, phone calls played, news broadcasts, shows, what happened at all the specific times – it was that horrible day all over again. There was a walled off section where you could watch the more sensitive footage from that day. I’m an empath, already overwhelmed by the exhibit and my memories of the day, so I didn’t go. My niece went in and I didn’t stop her. She walked out of the alcove and gulped. “That was…. yeah…” her voice trailed off. She didn’t have to finish her sentence. I knew.

We left heavier than when we arrived. “That was really intense,” I said. “Yeah, it was,” she replied. I shared my story with her, what I was doing, where I was, how I felt. The whole train ride home carried the heaviness of our experience.

“I’m glad that’s the last thing we did,” I said. “I need time to process all that.”

“Me too,” she said.

Here I am, 18 years later, still processing it.

11 September 2001

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Tuesdays were my favorite.

As a member of the Army ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) in college, Tuesdays were the only day I didn’t have to line up in formation at 0600 on the other side of campus for PT (Physical Training) – or Physical Torture, as I called it. It was basically an hour long gym class from hell.

I slept in.

I awoke around 0930, central time, in my dorm and turned the local rock station on the radio. Sometimes their morning show DJ got a little raunchy. This morning, the main guy was going off about something, I was only half listening. And then I caught, “….yeah, and then planes flying into the World Trade Center, man. I mean, wow, the devastation and <insert odd giggling here> ….this is….I’m so….people are dying, man.”

I strode across the room and turned it off. That was a new low for this radio station. Joking about planes flying into the World Trade Center in New York? Wow. That was beyond diabolical and had no business being on the air. I was disgusted. How could you even joke about something like that?

My roommate had already gone to class, as I stood there. I was in the middle of Illinois. It seemed really odd to me that they would be joking about something so specific, so far away. I wondered for a moment if there was any shred of truth to this. I turned on CNN to check.

And the breath got caught in my throat. The second tower had just fallen.

Like the rest of America, I sat glued to my television screen. That odd giggling of the DJ was not disrespect: that was the utter disbelief of what was happening in real time and the rule of no silence during a radio broadcast. My boyfriend lived down the hall (I was on a co-ed floor) and I ran to his room, trying to make sense of it. We then heard the Pentagon was hit – his mom worked near there. We tried to call her but the lines were busy all day. We were on eggshells, waiting for her to call. We learned later she was safely evacuated.

I called my dad at work. After everything I said, he answered with, “I don’t know, Simonne. I don’t know.” This was new territory for all of us.

I walked to my human biology class in a daze. The large lecture hall only had a smattering of students, all of us dazed. Our prof walked in with tear streaked mascara and shouted at us, “What are you doing here? Go back home, just go back! Class is cancelled.” She grabbed her stuff and sobbed as she walked out.

I walked like a zombie back to my dorm, not sure of what was suppose to happen next. I had never been to New York. I never knew anyone from New York. Yet in this moment, I felt like New York was home. It was a very strange juxtaposition that only made sense in the wake of the tragedy.

PT resumed the next day and I couldn’t wait to hear what my Lieutenant Colonel, the highest ranking officer on campus, had to say about all this. Right before our run, he huddled us up and spoke about the terrorist attack. “We got this, they’re not going to win, we will respond. Don’t worry. We got this.”

Hoowah! America would come out swinging and win, just as we always had.

Our college put together a rally on the Quad with a speaker from the Army. Classes were cancelled so everyone could attend on that sunny September Thursday at high noon. My boyfriend chose to stay in the dorm and play video games, but I was there. Everyone showed up, every group was represented. It was like a funeral, everyone was somber and quiet, yet it helped console the student body.

The Saturday following was our first home football game. I was part of the ROTC Colorguard during the national anthem. When we were out on the field, I can’t even begin to describe the silence. The stands were filled to the brim and yet when I closed my eyes, it felt like I was standing alone in the stadium. No movement, no sound, no babies crying, nothing. It was the strangest, most ethereal silence I have ever experienced. Nothing else has come close to it.

We had a Field Training Exercise where we were suppose to take Blackhawk helicopters to the location – needless to say, we took school busses instead. Five months later I got on a plane to fly out to Washington DC for a week. Friends freaked out, “How can you fly after what just happened? Aren’t you scared?” No. I also walked alone at night and refused to live in fear.

Today, 18 years later, this post-9/11 world is still unfolding.

Windswept, Part II

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While Matthew was a gentle and confident lover, Florence was into bondage and had a water fetish.

Should we stay or should we go? My husband I debated it like an impending divorce. My pastor who was staying in Wilmington said, “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as they say.” We decided to stay.

The day before she arrived, I brought supplies to a friend who had opened his home to the extreme poverty stricken, as many could not get into hurricane shelters without valid ID. Driving home, Wilmington reminded me of my college town in the summer: you could feel in the air that 20,000 people had left.

We took in a couple who had no where else to go. The four of us rode out the storm together.

My experience with Florence was a lot of talk and not a lot of action. Oh, you’re making the trees bend in half and defoliated everything? Fine, whatever.

At the Dovecote, we had loads of wind and a large tree branch come down. I kept walking down the street to see if ocean front property was in my future. Thankfully, we stayed high and dry. We lost power for three days – the longest I have ever gone without electricity. There was a creepy silence in the house without any appliances humming, but lighting the house by candlelight was good for my soul. The humidity shot up to 80% inside and there wasn’t a darn thing we could do about it. I like it hot, but even I was getting uncomfortable.

For me, the craziest part came after the storm. 50+ cars in line for gas was something I had never seen before. Wilmington became an island: all the roads into town had flooded out, so trucks bringing food, gas, and other supplies were cut off until further notice.

I stopped at Food Lion to grab some things just in case the roads stayed flooded. There was a line at the door, a man with a headset stood guard. “What’s the line for?” I inquired. “To get in,” a lady said. They were only allowing five people in the store at a time. The old lady behind me was there for cigarettes, sitting on a bin because her labored breathing made it hard to stand. “Gotta git muh cigs,” she kept muttering under her breath. Most everyone was there for cigarettes. Several cars rolled by shouting, “Y’all got ice?” “No!”

Like standing in line for the club, the doorman finally let me in. Only shelf stable food remained: no frozen, no meat, no produce, no dairy. I turned into a 12 year old and grabbed random food items that made no sense, completely thrown from my usual staples. “Any idea when the trucks can make it back into town?” I asked the lady at the register. “Nope.”

We were incredibly lucky. We knew people who lost everything and their insurance just shrugged at their loss. The displacement of people, how everything bloomed again like it was spring, followed by a muted spring, kept reminding me of this terrible storm. I know people who are still without a home, a year later, still trying to rebuild what Florence destroyed.

When it was all said and done, I lost 50 hours of work. I ate all of it. That caused some serious indigestion, but my home and my family were safe, and for that, I was thankful. In the weeks to come, we helped with the clean up effort.

And I must say, I am bit more than worried about what’s coming our way in the next few days.