Thought of the day:

It seems hard to believe that Sept. 11, 2001, was only 7 years ago. And yet, at other times, it seems a lifetime ago. My memories from that day are pretty scattered, and besides, I didn't really experience anything important that day, not anything life-shattering in the way that people who directly observed the towers fall, or who ran from the cloud of debris, or who lost someone they cared about. (What a hole that must leave. At least when someone who is old or sick passes, there is a sense of a life drawing to a close. The kind of losses that day were more a blade severing relationships than the slow binding-off of them.)

I still feel a sense of shock when I see documentary footage of it. How could that have happened? And yet, it did.

A happier memory? Saturday will be the seventh anniversary of my owning my little white-and-green house.



The sight that welcomes me every evening when I come home. (This is a late-autumn shot, from 2005, when we'd had a bit of snow).

One thing I do remember from that time is feeling, sadly, that even if the events of that day were the "beginning of the end," at least I'd have owned a house - one of my major life goals - for a little while, anyhow.

(I didn't move in until nearly the end of October of that year because of renovations that needed to be done - including many hours of me, sitting on the floor, listening to Rangers games on my little radio [they were the sanest thing I could tune in, even though I'm not really a baseball fan] and scraping what seemed to be miles of latex-over-alkyd paint from the baseboards and door trims).

I do think in a way those contemplative evenings scraping paint and listening to the Rangers - and the couple of Tuesdays (I didn't teach on Tuesdays back then) spent actually painting the walls the colors I wanted them did a lot to help save me from the sort of brooding worry to which I tend to be prone when there is Big Stuff going on in the world.

But still, when this day rolls around, I remember with sadness all those who died, all those families rent apart. And I remember the fear and incomprehension...this was the only thing like it that had ever happened in my life. (Later on, my mother told me she had felt a similar way during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that was of course before my time). And yet I also remember the excitement of having the "abstract" of the house come up clear, and the attorney saying everything was ready for closing, and me having the money needed ready to go in my bank account. And I had already picked up paint chips in the colors I thought I wanted, I had already bought a few new throw rugs...