In mental background

Today is The Day. The anniversary of what happened thirteen years ago. All those lives lost.

It's strange to me: it seems so incomprehensible now to me. But it happened. Also, at times it feels amazingly distant - the incoming freshpeople I have now were in kindergarten when it happened, and I can think of the huge gulf between my kindergarten days and when I first wandered the campus of U of M....and that seems like an amazingly long time. But as I sit at my desk, the same desk, the same chair as thirteen years ago (heck, some of the paper in my office is probably the same paper), it seems not that long ago. (I'm getting old.)

The biggest thing I personally remember, in my individual reaction, was how so many things I was doing suddenly felt futile. I was trying to write a Biostatistics exam when my then-chair came around and told us they were closing down the university for the day and we all needed to go home.

(To this day, I don't know if that was done out of respect for the loss of life, or out of concern there might be more things going to happen.)

And I found myself wondering: In the world that is coming, will we need Biostatistics? What is the point of learning about probability when something that seemed impossible just happened? Shouldn't I rather be teaching my students what basic first aid I know, and what plants are medicinal, and how to grow and find and hunt your own food? That was actually where my mind went: "Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it?"

I also remember the concern and the planning - making sure I had enough water and nonperishable food and a tank full of gas. (There were lines for gas, and places jacked up prices. One station, which I have not bought gas from since even though they have probably changed managers, had it at $6 a gallon. Because people would pay that, I guess. (I think I  paid 3-something. Which is what I am paying now on a regular basis, but it seemed inflated then). Going to the credit union and getting a cashier's check to pay for the house I was in the process of buying just in case there was a secondary cyberattack on the monetary system. Or a run on the banks causing them to close down.

And it all seems very paranoid now. (I also tried calling, but could not reach, my brother and sister in law, to tell them to get the H out of Chicago....) But it wasn't, then, because we didn't know.

Another thing I remember was how all the "fluff" channels (HGTV, the Cartoon Network....) went off the air for a couple days, putting up a title card saying something like "Out of respect...." Pretty much only the news channels were active. (In retrospect? I wish there had been a fluff channel that kept going as a place to retreat to)

Anyway. It's still jarring to think about. I think I once commented upon watching the footage, years after it had happened, that if I had emerged from a cave and only seen the footage and not known the events, my reaction would be along the lines that "this is a hideously violent and awful movie" - that it just didn't seem real.

I think of this day every year. It's in the back of my mind. I still relive a tiny bit of that disbelief and concern and sadness.

And also, I feel terribly guilty when I get roped into the "stupid" stuff of life. The petty stuff. I should not react to the dumb petty stuff as pettishly as I do. I should feel grateful that I'm alive. I should feel grateful that this country didn't get plunged into war-on-its-shores or a police state be declared or anything like that.

And yet I do get pettish about the petty stuff, and then I feel worse because, as I said, I should be grateful, yada yada. (I snapped a bit at a student this morning who showed some mild entitlement to me. I should be used to it by now. I'm fretting about having a dental checkup tomorrow. I feel irritated by an article I read about some guy who is a famous knitter because his knitting is "not grandma's knitting" and there's a quotation in the article about how "knitting is brutal" and it just makes me sigh and roll my eyes because I knit because I need a respite from what I see as brutality in the world and I want my knitting to be the opposite of drama, not the cause of it. And I feel vaguely sad that so many people seem to get lionized and lauded and that even with all I do, very few people will ever give that much of a darn about it. And then I feel bad because I feel like I'm not recognizing the people who DO give a darn, few as they might be....and I'm unhappy because I've had almost no time to knit or crochet this week, and that damages my mood. And I admit I felt irritated (but did not express it) at a student who said, "Are we doing anything Friday? I'm going to miss class because I'm going hunting" and thinking about all of the things I would LIKE to be doing and even stuff I need to do (like laundry) but am having a hard time finding the time to do this week because of other obligations, and thinking how lovely it would be to think of my classes as something I could blithely skip - and be open about that skipping - because of something I wanted to do. But I can never say, "I won't be coming in today because I want to stay home and knit" or "because there's a big antiques show I want to go to" or whatever)

And yeah, all of that is stuff that normally happens from time to time. But I feel extra-worse about it today because I feel like I'm not enjoying the life I'm privileged to have enough right now, and I should feel chastened because there were some 3000 people who aren't here now who would be if things had gone totally differently that day 13 years ago. (And I tend to find myself thinking that every year, and just like those of us who at Christmastime remember, but then as the new year rolls on, petition Christ to be allowed to continue to be "His disobedient servant" (as WH Auden wrote), I try to resolve to be "better" but often wind up failing at it.)

Kelly Sedlinger has one of the most striking short pieces about this day that I've ever read; he posts it every year to his blog and every year it never fails to move me.