Ten September 11ths

A decade ago, I sat on a train to downtown Chicago, having just seen the second plane hit the Twin Towers, listening to a very young woman wonder out loud why the airports were such a mess, why there was such chaos. I wanted to tell her what was happening in New York, but she'd just landed in my city from there. She had no idea. I couldn't be the one to tell her.

Hours later, my coworkers and I were nervously evacuating our building, a few short blocks from Sears Tower. We were afraid, like many others, it would be next to tumble. The streets were busy, people were confused, and so a kind coworker said she'd drive me home, not wanting to send me into the tunnels of train. The expressway was a calm, deep breath. It was empty, like everyone around it was waiting for the center of our city to implode next.

I didn't go home.

Instead, I went to my parents' house, sat with my mother for ten hours, watching the coverage, unable to move through most of it. We cried, we called loved ones, we prayed quietly to ourselves, we cried more. It was horrific and we felt, all those miles away, swept up in that awful gray dust.

I can't remember what happened late that night, what time I eventually went home, if any of us went to work the next day. I do know how overwhelmed I was to see footage in the days that followed of people in many other countries, holding up American flags in solidarity with our country, so in pain.

Would we do the same, I wondered. I knew the answer and that made the ache worse.

A few days after that, my church held a special prayer service. I sat in the dark, listening to names of people who were somehow connected to someone in the congregation. I let the hymns wash over me. It was the bells tolling that struck me hard, though, and made me think something revelatory and deeply spiritual for me -- my grandfather, who had died only weeks earlier, who had been a wise counselor and minister, had arrived in heaven just in time to meet all those souls as they arrived.

I hesitated in telling this to the Not Boyfriend, now ten years after the thought both choked me up and soothed me. It sounds so religious, and I felt the discomfort in admitting I believe there is a heaven where my grandfather eased the passing spirits of those lost suddenly or painfully or dreadfully slowly. But I do believe that. And that night, to the ominous tone of bells crying out in the middle of Lincoln Park, I had no doubt about my spiritual connection to strangers now dead.

It's the thought of the flags and of my grandfather that startled me once again as the tenth anniversary coverage began today. I wasn't expecting for those emotional strongholds to still be so gripping. I went to church again, this time with the little boy I had to explain the whole thing to, and who I chose to tell the truth, even though it did not all end OK. He wasn't bothered by my descriptions of steel beams from the towers bending like modern art under the compression and heat of the fall. He was calm and curious, asking what happened to the terrorists and if there were people who escaped and to please tell him more about the fire fighters. I asked him over and over if what he wanted to know, if he was OK, and each time, he shook his head assuredly.

We talked about heaven -- was Grampy Ashley there yet? We talked about fire -- can you run away from it? We discussed the sadness of the choices people made that day, about the many signs of bravery and goodness, about the ways people treated each other after the disaster -- why do people hate other people just because they don't believe in the same god? There was too much to cover, even in the decade-worn synopsis of it all. We tried to get to it. He took in what he could. I let some tears fall, even in front of him, because I reasoned it was just fine for him to see how emotional it may always be to look back on that day.

And still the thought of those flags flown overseas gnawed at me. Have we learned, really? Have we given of ourselves in the same ways other people offered to us? Why are we still fighting so many wars? Why are we still so scared? Those were my own questions, although maybe the same as Lil E's. Yes, Grampy was there, I like to think he eased their hearts and minds. No one is ever all bad or all good, but there are some choices that are very wrong, some ideas that are full of pain. And it's very, very hard to outrun fire. No matter how fast or wise or lucky you think you are.

Eventually, the talk died down. He needed to know. And I guess I needed to say some of it aloud. But we didn't need to linger on it any longer. 

In church, I know there were lovely hymns and peaceful prayers. I was still thinking. Next to me, my little boy was busy drawing Star Wars figures and scenes. It wasn't until just after the sermon, just before the communion, that I realized what was playing out in half-worn markers on his pages. There, in the pause of the body and blood of bread and wine, he was explaining the good and evil he gets, the fight he has witnessed of overcoming darkness and acknowledging the cry within as a call to serve. 

His version is cinematic, built up in Lego, acted out in movies and cartoons and Wii games. Ours was not necessarily a dark lord's manipulations and ultimate demise to one white-haired, optimistic working class kid with a force of good flowing in his veins. It's more complicated than that. But some of it seems very familiar, doesn't it? Our need to make one side totally bad and the other ever-venturing into the depths to avenge for good? The saga that never seems to end, the battles that go on marking generation after generation?

It might seem devalidating to parallel a national disaster that left so many people in grief that they still feel with a series of movies and licensed toys that my child and countless others are obsessed with well beyond their understanding. But it's the same story because it's how we want to polarize people and understand horrible things like murder and complicity. And it's the way his generation and maybe others will make sense of what happened way back then, what could happen next.

It's War Games. It's The Day After. It's Pearl Harbor. It's breaking news that goes on for hours and then days. It's ten years later. And there's still a lot to work out.