maypirate

So there's actually two lifeish events in the past 2 days that I feel like commemorating, but I'll do the more serious one first.

My dad is giving a lecture this afternoon as part of a 9/11 symposium. My dad is an excellent speaker, a Jew who grew up in Manhattan who is fascinated by religion and has created an entire institute on for the study of the Abrahamic faiths. I can't think of someone better to talk today.

I was in my second week of college, freshman year. I was sitting at my computer when my roommate Alice came in -she was wearing a white long-sleeve t-shirt and blue shorts- and said what I thought was "Two planes crashed into the rural train center."

Having just been at the Amtrak station in Elyria to pick up and drop-off

agamemnon183, I thought, "Wow, that's crazy."

Then I found out what she actually said.

It's funny how much things have changed since then - there was no twitter or smart phones, so the news spread slowly by mouth, by email.

Most of my close friends in college came from New York or New Jersey, and so did a lot of other people. My floor had the big TV lounge and it was covered with students watching CNN, crying, calling home.

I suppose that should stand out to me, but what I really remember is walking to Africa House for dinner, and a church bell was continuously tolling and we stopped and saw a squirrel dying on the grass and Rebecca said, "Do you feel like we're in a bad novel?"

And it completely did.

Bad things happen every day in the world. Terrible, impossible things and many of them go by unrecognized or unmourned. There is no question that there's a profound significance to this day, as an American, as someone with family and friends in New York. But they all need to be recognized. Today is just another day but it's not another day. We are, as it says in one of my prayer books, a world waiting still to be redeemed.

What in a way has more significance to me than the horror, the disbelief, the sorrow, is two weeks later, standing in Chicago, looking up as a lone plane made its way through the bright blue sky. It had never before seemed significant, but in a world that suddenly had significantly less air-travel, it was a strangely comforting sight.

"Go plane go!" said Harlo, who grew up in New York City.

And I remember that. And I hope.