Friday, September 9, 2011
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
The Day Something Happened
By J’AMY PACHECO
I doubt there’s an American adult alive today who doesn’t vividly remember the morning of September 11, 2001.
I was home with my then-five-year-old when my husband called from work and told me to leave the television off.
“Something happened,” he said.
I spent the rest of the day making telephone calls for an article on what courthouses in several counties were doing in response to the attacks. With the television dark and silent, everything I learned about the events of 9/11 came from my Internet news page, and those telephone conversations.
Two days later, I had to leave my daughter at school for her first day of kindergarten. It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, and before I drove away, I sat in the parking lot and cried.
In the decade that has passed since that unthinkable something happened, a lot has changed in my world.
For example, the daughter who started kindergarten amid the horror and chaos of 9/11 is now in high school. In less than three years, she will be headed for college.
Having come of age in this post-attack world, she remains afraid of any kind of aircraft flying overhead.
I admit that I’m not as trusting as I used to be. Flying home from Denver a few months ago with my daughter, I couldn’t help noticing the odd behavior exhibited by the clean cut man who occupied the seat separating me from the aisle.
Shortly after takeoff, he put his book in the seatback pocket and started fiddling with something small he held in his hands. When he noticed me noticing, he put the object in his pocket and went to the lavatory.
Upon his return, he covered himself with his jacket and continued manipulating whatever object he held. I agonized over what to do. I wanted to tell someone, but what could I say? That the man was holding something small and was making me nervous? What if it was a string of worry beads?
I finally tackled the situation head-on. I turned to face him and started talking. Non-stop. Had he been in Denver on vacation? Work? Oh, what kind of meeting? Did he know the best route from Orange County Airport to the 91 Freeway? Did he have kids?
I kept the dialog up throughout most of the flight. I don’t like flying, and normally would have gone to sleep. But I stayed awake in my seat, declining beverages so I wouldn’t have to leave my daughter to go to the bathroom, and talked the guy’s ear off. In hindsight, it’s probably fortunate he didn’t try to open the door and jump. I still don’t know what he was doing with his hands. But if he was going to try something, then by golly, I was going to be ready to pounce.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to. But I would have, given a good reason and opportunity. I wasn’t always so pushy, and I suspect the events of 9/11 have something to do with it.
If I feel uncomfortable somewhere, I don’t hesitate to leave. If I see someone drop a backpack on a seat and exit, as I did on a train in late June, I have no qualms about getting up and asking the surrounding passengers if they knew the guy. (His wife did.)
Something happened a decade ago, and we’ve all been affected. We’ve lost some liberties, like the freedom to take big tubes of toothpaste in our carryon luggage. Because of terrorists, we have to have our bags searched at public venues, and strangers at airports are now allowed to touch the most personal parts of our children and the elderly. And everyone else, for that matter. I don’t like it, but I can live with it.
I went to Ground Zero with my husband and daughter just before Christmas last year. It was a busy area, bustling with tourists, construction workers and vendors hawking memorial books. It was hard to reconcile all that energy and activity with images we saw outside the construction walls, like the photo of a firefighter saluting while tears streamed down his face.
It reminded me that while something devastating and unthinkable happened a decade ago, we’ve gone on. Things are different—we are different—but we’re still here and strong.
We still fly, take trains, go to school and work, and even use worry beads now and then.
We remember, and we live. As we do both, we hang onto the hope that something like that will never happen again.
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company