Flashback (to 2020 and 2001)
On the life-altering events that shaped me before this one did
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been struggling with being a single parent, getting settled into our new apartment, finishing the never-ending death paperwork that I can’t put off any longer, and grief with a thick layer of anxiety that is making everything harder to manage.
But this post from 9/11/2020 popped up on Facebook today and I thought I’d share it here.
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It’s been 19 year and 6 months since the most life-altering times of my life (and of many of yours). And I don’t mean 19 years and 6 months ago – I mean 19 years ago, and also 6 months ago. Exactly 6 months ago we pulled the boys out of school and I started working from home. Our personal stay-home orders were only ahead of the rest of Los Angeles by a couple of days.
On March 10, as I left work knowing I would be working from home for a little while, I considered taking home a few mementos from my desk, but then I thought that would make me look crazy. No one else was asking to work from home. There was chatter about COVID at work, but nobody seemed to be that concerned. And so I left the cute little painted rocket ships the boys made in preschool that have their photos on them; and my favorite wedding photo of Andy and me; and the photo cube that my former boss Kathleen gave me for Christmas; and the beautiful orange heart-shaped glass paperweight that my cousin Arriane gave me; and my Cholula hot sauce that I kept in my desk. Six months later, I assume everything is still there, though we’re not allowed to pick anything up.
These last few months have felt a little like the aftermath of September 11 to me. Living in NY on 9/11 cured my panic attacks (mostly anyway). I’d always worried about all the horrible things that could happen to me and mapped out worst case scenarios in my head to be prepared. But nothing drives home the fact that you are not in control like a terrorist attack a couple of miles from your home. I finally understood the serenity prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change. I had no choice but to do so.
So when COVID hit, it was familiar territory. I was not in control. I had to accept what was happening and deal with it. I know some people are craving a return to normal, talking about how things used to be, carrying on as if things are normal….and these are all ways of coping. But my way is quick acceptance and moving on, due in large part to my experience living in a city where terrorists flew two passenger planes full of passengers into the two buildings we could always rely on to help us find our bearings and our place in our city. Those of us in New York could not deny the reality. We couldn’t take our time trying to accept it. We could smell the burning buildings. We could feel the smoke in our lungs. We could see the missing posters lining the streets.
That first morning after, on September 12, I woke up, remembered what had happened and tried to go back to sleep, hoping it had been a bad dream and that I would awake to the old world. I was with my childhood friend Carrie and her friend Susan and their friend whose name I forget, who had suggested we all stay at her apartment that night. Carrie’s husband was out of town and the rest of us were single and none of us wanted to be alone.
Carrie left early; Susan and I left together later. We walked up an eerily quiet 8th Avenue – there was almost no traffic and the only people we saw were those walking their dogs. We mostly walked in silence. And then a fire truck drove past us, slowly, quietly, ashes trailing behind it. And Susan said, “That sure brings you back to reality.” And that was the last time I tried to imagine an alternate universe where this horrible thing didn’t happen.
That’s where I am now. The reality is that we will probably be dealing with COVID for many more months, if not years. Initially the death rate was what scared us all, but now it’s also the aftermath for those who “recover.” It’s the ease of how it’s spread – in the air – making the places where we congregant indoors the most dangerous places to be. It’s the fact that it has killed nearly 200,000 people in our country and that’s with unprecedented laws around social distancing and mask wearing. It’s terrifying. But because it’s slow and not visible in the way that planes crashing into buildings is, somehow it seems less dangerous to many people. While New Yorkers couldn’t deny 9/11 – one only had to look south to see the hole in the skyline – most of us are not reminded daily about how many people are dying from COVID. Even if we see the data, it’s abstract. We’re not seeing missing posters on our daily commutes. We’re not getting a whiff of the burning buildings weeks later because the wind shifted direction and the pile is still smoldering. We’re just hearing noise on TV and Facebook about it. It’s easy to ignore or downplay. We can pretend it’s not happening.
About a year after 9/11, I drove from New York to Ohio to meet up with some of my college friends. In hindsight I’d been a bit of a mess since 9/11 but hadn’t realized it. I’m sure I had undiagnosed PTSD. On the way to Ohio I heard “Wide Open Spaces” on the radio and I burst into tears. And that’s when I realized I had to leave New York. I’d never been happy there and at that point I was only staying because I felt like if I left, it meant the terrorists had won. (Yes, I know that’s ridiculous.) I was a sales rep at Random House at the time and I knew our Texas rep had just quit her job. And so I decided that I wanted to move to Austin. I interviewed for the job and got it before I’d ever visited Austin.
All these years later, and I’m going through the same things. I’m re-evaluating where I live, what I do, what I want from life. The world is different: maybe how I interact with it should be different too. My life now bears little resemblance to my life 19 years ago. I’m not single living in a tiny shoebox in NY; I’m married with two kids living in a house we own. Yet the impulse is the same. Accept what is happening. Deal with it and figure out the best way forward. I hope I can make the right choices. And if not, I hope I have - as the Dixie Chicks sang - room to make a big mistake.
