TheBanyanTree: 911 - The Best Revenge

[paul]

[ By a friend-of-a-friend.  Sent on with permission.  paul ]



I woke up this morning early, wrapping myself in my fuzzy robe with moons
and stars and toddling into the kitchen for a drink of water and, I’ll
admit, half a cold beer from last night.  The thought passed through my
groggy head that this felt something like Christmas morning, the world
around me still asleep, and me feeling wonderful and free, full of good
feeling and newness
a feeling all the more rare the older I get.  At 38, on
good days, I'm still 'thirty-something', and on bad days, I'm pushing forty.
  We played a great gig last night and rocked the place, and despite the
less than spectacular crowd turnout, they booked us again
we ain’t gonna get
rich, but it beats having to pay our own gas to get there.  Lead singer of a
cover band may be a humble dream, but I’m living it, and it feels better
than just about anything else in my entire adult life.

Then I sit down here at the ‘puter, and my email reminds me what day it is.
Ouch.  How dare I be happy?  How dare I be joyous?  How the hell dare I be
smug, inspired, determined to party, on the day when so many good plain
folks like me died so horribly, just three years ago?  Well if you bear with
me, I’ll tell you how.

I have wondered now and then how folks old enough to remember where they
were when they heard Kennedy was assassinated, and who endured the awful
news on September 11, 2001, could stand to bear both.  Then I recall where I
was when I heard the news of the Oklahoma City Bombing (9:00am, Music Theory
Class, SWTSU)  and hearing the fire break out (placing my order at the
drive-thru, Taco Bell, Burnet Rd, Austin, TX), and the flag fall atop the
Branch Davidian Compound in Waco (as I was picking up my order) as flames
engulfed the entire building.  I remember the disbelief, the
pins-and-needles feeling of numbness over my entire body, the thought that
this just can’t be happening
news like this comes from OTHER countries, NOT
the USA and SURE NOT the state next door, or my very own proud State of
Texas
my OWN STATE???  Right up the road?!  There has to be a mistake, or as
is said in one of my favorite horror movies, “Ya gotta be kiddin me
ya GOTTA
be f**kin kiddin me!!!” Sometimes it seems about as horrible as anything,
that we go on in the face of such terror and tragedy.  But we survive, most
of us, somehow, don’t we?  At least, we survive.

The horrific obliteration of the World Trade Center three years ago brings
back every awful bit of news I've ever heard.  And yet, somehow, I had been
joyous, enthusiastic, young when I got up this morning.  A friend of mine
sent me an email linked to a site that listed some of the recorded footage
from 9/11/01, and I morbidly followed my cursor, winding up listening to
flight attendant Betty Ong’s phone call from Flight 11.  There wasn’t a lot
to it, no screaming or such, just a “Betty?  Hon?  I think we lost her
”
from air traffic control at the end.  But I felt sick all the same, thinking
in nauseous fascination, “This lady died, died bravely and horribly
here it
is seconds before and she doesn’t even know she’s going to die, now she
knows but she's still holding it together, and now she’s been dead for three
years."  I wonder about her friends and family
crazy impulses seize me as I
wish desperately to send them a card, a phone call, a sobbing hug
as if that
would help.

My memory of that day is one of confusion to start with.  Racing the clock
to work at Texas Parks & Wildlife Headquarters, I heard on the radio that a
plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York.  That was all I heard at
first, and I envisioned a nut in an ultralight whose stunt went awry.  I
remember thinking casually, cynically, “Bummer, somebody’s having a much
worse day than me!”  But it seemed so far away, and what the hell, people
die every day, you can’t get freaked about all of them or you’ll wind up in
a padded cell writing letters home in crayon with your feet, right?  I was
blissfully unaware how much closer New York would seem in the next
half-hour.  Security was clamped down at TPW almost immediately.  The TV in
the conference room was almost right in front of my Receptionist desk, so
for the next 9 hours I heard most everything on the news – the horror, the
confusion, inevitable mistakes in reporting, gross exaggeration balanced by
gross underestimation.  By the time I saw the footage of the second plane
hitting, I was already numb, on complete overload.  This could not be real.
Somehow I missed (or blocked out?) any footage of people jumping from the
Towers while I was at work.  Good thing because I would have just completely
lost it.  The lady who trained me at that job was, to put it kindly, a
hardass.  She spent her day snickering about coworkers she didn’t care for
when they got upset or cried, saying things like, “It’s not like they KNOW
anyone there, what are they carrying on about?”  I am ashamed to say that
because of this I kept a poker face for much of the day, only showing some
anger here and there and a “Nuke’em Till They Glow” attitude towards whoever
was responsible for this.  Nuke who?  I didn’t care, just a kneejerk,
nihilistic reaction, blind rage.  Besides, I thought, I mustn’t show any
weakness around that lady or she’d be snickering about me next, and that was
still more important to me than folks dying across the country.  Nope, no
weakness here, nosir.  Incidentally, that lady dropped dead of a heart
attack  less than two months later
makes me wonder, how many more victims of
that attack were there, whose hearts or minds couldn’t take it?  I heard of
suicides here and there on the news or the net.  My own biological father
would die of a heart attack before the end of October, never having met me
because I waited too long to try.  Was it the stress from 9/11, or maybe
from my first contact letter?  Both?  Neither?  Maybe it seems silly to
wonder, but I always will.

When I got home that evening, I did see footage of some of the people who
jumped, and then I lost it.  Just rocked back and forth on my second-hand
loveseat in my crumbly little loft apartment, my arms wrapped around myself
in a comfortless hug, and howled till I ran to the kitchen sink and threw
up.  I don’t have any significant memories of the next few days, except of
course the empty skies and this awful dread, wondering what would happen
next.  All those people
those poor, poor people.  That’s all I could think
as I cried
those poor, poor people.

I do have one bright memory of September 12th, at least I think that's when
it was.  Driving to work, there was a man standing on one of the overpasses
of IH-35, waving a big American flag for all he was worth.  I've heard alot
of cynicism about flag-waving, but that made me feel better, to see that guy
doing that, out there early in the morning for all the rush-hour drivers.  I
wonder how long he did that, and who he was.  Thanks, Flag-Waving Dude.
Rock on.

About 9 years ago, I took my first vacation in several years, after which I
promised myself that from then on I would take a week’s vacation every year.
  Even if it was something cheap, it made a huge difference in my morale for
months.  I had scheduled my vacation in 2001 for September 21, and I kept
the date.  It was a driving trip from Austin to El Paso, then on to Ruidoso,
NM to spend a week at my Aunt Betty’s vacation home, swinging by Marfa, TX
on the way back to check out the mysterious Marfa Lights (highly recommended
- yes, they're real, whatever they are).

I left Austin at about 4am, driving towards Kerrville.  Scarce traffic is
not unusual on a country road, but I didn’t see another vehicle at ALL until
well past dawn.  I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode.  Then it was
almost all trucks; eighteen-wheelers doing their job, keeping this country
in eggs, tires, and Levi’s as usual, God bless every one of ‘em.  Whether it
was wise or healthy for me to do so or not, I found myself listening all day
to National Public Radio, which you can pick up everywhere, even in West
Texas.  The memory that stands out is listening to a listing of items found
in the rubble: bent eyeglasses, a melted driver’s license, a child’s singed
shoe.  This wasn’t far from El Paso, and I had seen maybe five cars all day.
  The trucks were thick, and I was alongside this convoy which was decorated
in red white and blue.  At the head was a gigantic rig, shiny black with
lots of chrome.  The driver had decorated his cab like a Fourth of July
bandstand, patriotic bunting draped all around it.  He was hauling a tanker,
and from the back of it streamed an 8-foot high American Flag.  I had been
crying on and off all day as I drove, and this got me going again.
Emotionally raw and being a woman alone on the road (an eerily deserted road
at that), I had avoided eye contact with any of the truckers, but I tooted
my horn and gave the guy a thumbs up through my sunroof.  He nodded and gave
a honk and a determined thumbs up in return, never smiling.  I wondered if
he was listening to the same station I was.  Just then, a honking started up
behind us.  From the Northeast, here came five military jets, flying in a
wide V formation over us towards a mountain pass in the Southwest, I think
the one that El Paso is named for.  All the trucks laid on their horns until
I couldn’t hear the jets, but I think somehow the pilots knew, because the
last jet buzzed low, right over us, right over my car.  It was so low I
could see the rivets on the bottom of the wings, and it even drowned out the
truck horns as it roared over me.  I was waving my hand with two fingers
held up – a peace sign?  A victory sign? Both? – with tears pouring down my
face, yelling, “Yeah!  YEAH!!”  It’s probably a wonder I didn’t have a
wreck.  It was the most beautiful and terrible memory and I cry now as I
write this.  I love you, People Who Died.  I love you, Truck Driver Dude.  I
love you, Air Force Pilot.  I love you, America.

The last three years have seen tremendous changes in my life.  I married for
the first time in May of 2002, and with my husband’s love and encouragement
I started a rock band that is finally getting paid a little more than it
costs us to spend the time jamming.  Maybe it doesn't seem like much, but it
is a life-long dream of mine, and I still can’t believe I’m living it.  And
the morning after a kickass gig
well, yes, it feels quite a bit like
Christmas morning, even if it is September eleventh.  But what can I do for
Betty Ong, or her family, or all the other plain good people – the firemen,
the children, the secretaries (who have a special place in my heart), to
remember them, to make their lives and deaths have meaning?  I can give to
charities until I have nothing left, and it won't make a dent.  I can cry
until I make myself sick.  I can put a flag in my yard or on my car, which I
will.  I can show support to our firefighters and police and military, even
if I hate war, and I do.  But the depth of grief I feel still says, It’s not
enough, it’s never enough, so what else can I do?

They say living well is the best revenge, and that is what I will do.  I
will live well, and I will love.  I will chase my dreams, no matter how
silly or humble or far out, in this blessed country -- yes, still so blessed
-- where we still  have a chance to do that, where, if we don't trade too
much of it for security, we still have the freedom to try.  I will rock and
roll and sing and work and party and live well and love even more.  I will
do it for myself, and I will also do it for the people who can’t
who are
destroyed by grief, who are dust in the wind, who are just barely surviving
today.  I live, we live, for all of us, with love, determination, and
gratitude.  It is the best I can do, and you all deserve my best.

I’m glad I wrote this down for my nieces and maybe my own child to read one
day.  We must remember the horrible moments to try to figure out how to make
the world, and our own country  better, even if that seems like a ridiculous
dream, maybe especially then.  We must keep trying, we must not just
survive, but live.  Remember those moments and those people in the midst of
tragedy that are so beautiful and terrible, they give us the vital
determination, love, and courage to live on.  Remember the nightmare, but
live your dreams.  Live, and Live Well.

Love to All,
Beth Sanders Nelson
Cedar Park, TX
www.pickletink.com