Nine Years Ago Today

Nine years ago today, the full weight of being a parent fell down upon me with a deafening force that created a vacuum that tried to suck me and everything that I loved in with it. One single phone call held the key to my undoing. It was Tuesday morning, well before 8 am, so the ringing phone meant it was either a wrong number or it was important. Oh, for the former.

The Beloved: Are you up? Are you awake? Turn on the news!
Me: Why? What's going on?
TB: Someone crashed a jet into one of the Twin Towers! There are rumors that it was deliberate. That it was a terrorist attack.
Me: Silence.

You know that sudden up-swell of emotion that takes you by surprise? The sudden noisy rush of air out of your mouth and nose like some one's stepped on your middle, and it feels like the air might even rush out of your eyes, spraying in it's wake a shower of the tears that are suddenly, yet unbidden, inexplicably, and plentifully just there? I feel it again now, so many years later, the feeling of needing to suppress, to contain against expansion, an outcry of anguish, only slightly less so than on that morning nine years ago. The mind numbing slap of the realization that my beloved country had been attacked. An act of war. Against us. The Girlie had crept into our bed, as always, when her Daddy left for work. Either that or as he'd often done when she was still little and not yet ten yards of arms and long legs, he'd scooped up her small sleeping self and deposited her there into the warmth he'd recently vacated. Either way, she was there, curled into my side, and I snuggled her sleeping little body closer to me, while scenes from the old black and white movie "May Day!" played out in my head. How would I protect her?

TB: Tracy? Are you there?
Me: Yeah. I'm here.
TB: Are you okay?
Me: No.
TB: You're okay. You're safe there.
Me: What about ******?
TB: She's there with you, in bed?
Me: Yes. She's right here.
TB: She'll be okay. Just keep her with you. You'll be okay way out there.
Me: Okay
TB: Tracy? Don't go anywhere today. Stay home. If you do have to go out, don't go to where there are any crowds. People are going to be coming unglued. Just stay home if you can.

We hung up with I Love You's and Miss You's. I don't remember how long I lay there terrified for my daughter. It could have been a few minutes. It could have been twenty. I don't think it was that long. I left my sleeping treasure safe in bed and turned on the news in the living room. I watched the footage of American Airlines Flight 11 plunge into the North Tower. About fifteen minutes later I saw the second jet, United Airlines Flight 175, plunge into the South Tower. I saw people leap to their certain deaths from the burning crumbling, buildings. I saw both towers come down. Watched repeatedly as the news reels played out. Repeated. Over and over again. And repeated over again. And the footage of American Airlines flight 77 that had crashed into The Pentagon. The news that United Airlines Flight 93 had gone down over Pennsylvania, on it's way to The White House. There were many, many calls back and forth between The Beloved and I, as I stood transfixed for hours in front of the television in horror just like millions of other Americans. Millions of other people. Millions of other souls. And I wept.

There is no stunning conclusion to this post. Only the tragedy that remains. The lingering terror and consuming need to protect our then, only child. We were right smack dab in the middle of the umpteenth course of fertility treatment trying to conceive The Middle Little. I wanted to stop. How could we protect our daughter and a baby in times of war? I guess it was an act of defiance that we persisted. Some sort of private tribute to the triumph of human spirit when that vacuum finally closed. We finally conceived three months later in December, and I delivered the news to The Beloved on his birthday in January, on the first ever snow trip for The Girlie to Big Bear. The Middle Little will be 8 years old in three days. A September birth seemed fitting for the baby who almost wasn't. I wanted him born on my Mother's birthday, September 5th, but the doctor said no, it would be too soon. Okay then, how about September 11th, then? "Tracy. You've tried to control everything in this pregnancy. We're already taking him two weeks early. Be content with that and let me be the doctor." Okay then. September 14th it is. It was her decision to take him two weeks early, for both our sakes. Was three days earlier really that relevant?

As dawn broke over our sleeping house this morning, I was, as so often is the case, awake. Jack is asleep on the couch with a newly full belly. The Littles are snug in their beds, and I can hear The Beloved's soft snore over the baby monitor. Yes, Jack is still in our room in his cradle, even though The Beloved lowered the mattress in the crib last weekend. The crib. Not yet his crib, as he has yet to spend a night in it. He will be ten months old tomorrow. I drug a chair out to the front of the house to hang our Union Jack, Old Glory, My Beloved flag, as the sun winked into daybreak. I climbed down off of the chair and crossed my right hand over my heart and said the Pledge of Allegiance to my flag while standing barefooted on cold cement. In my nightgown. Because I can. I am an American.



There are posts between this and the last that I am still polishing. I get ideas and draft them and save them for when I have a minute in the early pre-dawn sleepless hours to work on them. Teaser: sharp little pearly white eruptions. There are at least five on the drawing board, so be sure not to miss a single riveting (ahem!) post!