Wednesday, October 10, 2001
For no reason at all, and out of the blue, this dream came back to me. I had it maybe 8 months to a year ago.
In the dream I remember riding the New York City subways. They were grimy and covered with graffiti. Bums and bag ladies rode along with us.
Out in the city, we knew a bomb was coming. It was late afternoon. We were all trying to get out, get away, but didn’t know how. I ended up just walking and walking, until I got to somewhere like Queens. The sun was setting. A bomb came. We watched the sky light up an eerie color. I was worried it was the end of the world. I was so afraid.
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
It’s been exactly 5 weeks but feels more like 5 days. It’d be a joke to say people are "getting over" September 11. It’s not easy when now we are bombing Afghanistan and someone is mailing powder laced with anthrax to people like Tom Brokaw.
The sense of surreal continues. On the news they barely mention the cleanup in New York (4,600 still missing). Instead it’s all about anthrax and the latest hoaxes and on-line polls about whether or not we’re afraid, then maybe a little bit of news about the bombing, which always seems to be the same: we’re "making progress."
This is why people are not healing – the terror continues. It’s almost as if real life is on hold and we’ve just been drafted to run around, react, and put out fires.
I am not really afraid. I’m just upset this is happening to our country. Some days all of this seems either horribly bleak or bizarre.
Every day I think of the World Trade Center. And the planes. I wonder if there will ever be a day when I don’t? And if I’M like this, I can’t even fathom being a New Yorker, or having lost family or friends.
So the peace has not yet come. People are buying gas masks and trying to get their hands on antibiotics. Last night – I swear – Tom Brokaw shook a little capsule of pills in his hand at the end of the broadcast. "In Cipro we trust," he said with this eerie grin. He thought it was delightfully ironic or something. I just felt sick.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
This afternoon I was reading the "Today in History" section of the paper. On this date in 1983, 241 U.S. soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in Beirut. Then I think of the present, of 5,200 people dead. 241 used to seem like such a big number. It makes 5,000, as Rudy Guiliani said, feel "unbearable."
There are choices – watch the news and hear the panic or don’t watch and wonder "is anything new going on?" Today they reassured us the President doesn’t have anthrax. Well that’s a relief. Others are dying. What are we going to do, stop getting mail?
At church they talk about how God destined each one of us to live in this time. My question is – why? Because the Little House on the Prarie era is looking mighty attractive right now.
It’s not that I doubt God. I know He’s there. I’m just scared He’s mad and not listening. I don’t want the rest of my life to be chaos. To me that sounds utterly depressing. I keep praying for mercy – for me, for everyone. Please God? Help us to know what the heck we’re supposed to do. I feel afraid of God right now, like He’s mad and letting us try to figure things out, which is of course, hopeless.
Then there is this contrast: last night I stayed up to watch the Yankees – yes, the Yankees – clinch the American League pennant. If you’d told me that last year, I would’ve shuddered at the thought. But yes, I watched the Yankees beat the Mariners to make it to the World Series.
Yankee Stadium was charged. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it, I don’t know, vibrating like that. As soon as they won, the PA system there cranked up Sinatra. Suddenly, booming out across the field was that familiar intro:
Start spreading the news...I’m leaving today,
I want to be a part of it...New York, New York.
Everyone in the crowd joined in singing at the top of their lungs. Joe Torre went and hugged Mayor Guiliani. The fans kept screaming. A month ago that very stadium had been half-full with people silent or weeping, attending a massive memorial service. Maybe it was that day the animosity I’ve always felt for New York melted away. At least for the most part.
So the Yankees won, and as I was falling asleep, I thought of all those ecstatic fans leaving and getting in their cars and seeing the empty skyline and having it all come rushing back. I prayed for them. I prayed for the emptiness that would start to settle, as they came back to the quiet, crawled under the covers, and like me, tried to fall asleep.