Smoke and Mirrors

Vermont!

I spent this past weekend at my mom's house -- I wanted to get away for a few days, get out of the city. I really wanted to hug my mom, and not watch the news, and goof around, and get some rest. I hopped on a bus Friday after work, and went to South Station to buy a ticket. I was surprised to see very few police officers there, and no apparent added security -- I was nervous about my keychain, which is a Swiss Army knife, but bags weren't checked or anything. Other than the driver checking tickets, there was nothing aside from a few cops near the door on the first level. I didn't know whether to be relieved or worried by that. The bus ride was uneventful -- I read a bit, slept a bit, listened to music... I didn't sleep as much as usual, though. Normally, on the five-hour trip, I am asleep almost the whole way. I always fall asleep in moving vehicles. Yes, that does include the subway. I'm odd that way. I was too tense to sleep -- the front page of Friday's paper had a story that said Boston had recieved a credible terrorist threat for the following day. I alternated between worrying, and telling myself nothing was going to happen. (Of course, you know nothing did. The FBI said the threat was nothing at all. Whew.) I listened to music and fidgeted and chewed my nails until I got to my mom's town -- once I got there, I felt much better. We went back to her house, and I petted the dog and cat, and met my brother's gerbil, Walter (who my mom seems to have inherited since my brother moved to Connecticut). I ate (mom cooks the best food) and we talked, watched TV, has a glass of wine... that was pretty much what we did all weekend, in fact. Saturday, I went and got my newest tattoo:







That picture is blurry, I know -- but have you ever tried to take a clear picture of your own left arm? I love it -- it's not the design I planned on getting, though. I had a different angel in mind, but I couldn't get a clear enough printout of it, and I saw this design on the wall and liked it much better. They had a whole series of angels like this, in different postures -- I now want all of them. I tried to talk mom into getting one herself, but she wasn't feeling well enough, having just gotten over a cold. (SDon't look at me like that -- she's got one already! A little bumblebee on her shoulder -- very cute.)

We spent the rest of the weekend shopping, and eating, and talking, and working a jigsaw puzzle. I didn't want to come back, it was so relaxing. I needed the time at home, and she was happy to see me. I don't feel quite so tired now.

What can I say?

I don't know what to say that others haven't said eloquently and heartbreakingly already. Things seem to be, sometimes, getting back to almost normal -- I hear people talking about other things on the bus, and that's all right, and then I look out the window and see all the flags, flying from windows and porches and car antennas and such. And now, at this moment, I am listening to NPR, and they have announced the name of the military action to answer the attacks: Operation Infinite Justice. Why am I suddenly so much more afraid?

I spent the last five days avoiding the news altogether -- I crashed in bed, sick, and watched mindless HBO instead. Friday afternoon I was so tired, and I thought that was why my shoulders and eyes and legs ached so much. I slept a little on the bus, and felt worse when I got to my stop, so I went to the drugstore and bought a thermometer and some cold medicine. My temperature was 102 -- not just tired, then. I crawled into bed and stayed there, pretty much around the clock, until this morning. I ventured out to shower and go get soup on occasion -- other than that, it was all bed and movies, all the time. I went back to work today, even though I really didn't feel like it. I'm leaving early Friday to go to Vermont for the weekend -- I want to hug my mom, badly. She's got a cold, so we'll spend the weekend eating soup and sniffling.

September 11, 2001

Yesterday morning started out perfectly normal. Got up, bopped along with some happy music on the subway, got to work... I did my usual morning routine of email-reading, and then went to Boston.com for my morning news fix. On the top of the page, there was a little box with a breaking news item -- a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. More details to follow. I read it, and though "Oh, no. How awful." I thought it was an accident, a plane crash that would no doubt be terrible, but I had no idea what it meant. A few minutes later, my coworker Robin walked by and said "Hey, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center." Two? That can't be right. How could two planes crash into the same building? Robin had his headphones on -- on normal days, he listens to Howard Stern while he works. That morning, they had cut into the show to announce what was happening. I went back to Boston.com, and the breaking news box had changed -- it confirmed what I thought couldn't be true. Two planes. Both towers in flames. Terrorists suspected. My God. I sat and stared for a few minutes, then tried to get into CNN, ABCNews, any news page at all. They were all down. I logged into 3WA chat, desperate to find out what was happening, and sick at the thought of my friends in New York, and what they might be going through. Between the chat room and Boston.com, the news trickled in. The towers were burning. The planes had been hijacked, and at least one was from Boston. The northern tower fell. A plane hit the Pentagon. The southern tower fell. A plane crashed in Pennsylvania. All four planes had been hijacked. Rumors came and went -- there were more hijacked planes, and no one knew where they were. Car bombs. The White House under attack. I sat at my desk, hitting refresh over and over to reload the page -- every single time, the news was different. I could only get into Boston.com. Robin kept listening to his radio, giving updates to us at work. My boss scrambled to find a TV, a radio, anything that we could use to see what was going on. I sat at my desk, numb, shaking, in disbelief. There were students in the library -- some had been in class all day, and had no idea what was going on. One came up to me and asked "Are you okay? Is something wrong?" I had been whispering "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God" over and over. I didn't know what to tell him. Slowly, over the course of the day, my friends in New York appeared in the chat room. The knot in my stomach eased slightly each time I heard that one of them was okay, but then came back as I continued to read the news. The video clips of the planes crashing into the towers. The towers falling. The news that all the tall buildings in Boston were being evacuated. My mom called me at work, sounding panicked, to check on me. I was fine, I assured her -- nothing was happening here, but I'd call her first thing if anything did. My boss went to a meeting, and came back white-faced -- the building she was in had been evacuated. She told us not to try to work, since none of us could concentrate. I sat and read the news, over and over, and then would go outside for a cigarette and be amazed at the clear blue sky, the students going about their day, the peacefulness. The events unfolding on my computer screen didn't seem real. There was a TV set up in the lobby of the building next door -- I went and watched for a few minutes on my lunch break. The same images, over and over. People scrambling to understand what was happening, and why.

I left work and got on the subway -- the trains and stations were nearly deserted. No one spoke. No one smiled. Everyone looked like I felt -- this isn't happening. This can't be happening. I went home, locked all the doors, turned on my TV, and sat and cried as I saw New York, saw the gaping scar where the Twin Towers had been, saw the video of the people falling and jumping from the burning buildings. I heard that people on the planes had made calls to family members before they died. I called my mom and left a shaky message for her to please call me back, even though I was fine and I knew she was fine -- I needed to hear her voice. I sat and sobbed into the phone to her as the images were played again and again. She said "You're witnessing history. You're witnessing the beginning of the next World War." My God. How can this be happening? I sat up and watched the news until midnight, after Rudy Giuliani's press conference. There were people alive in the rubble, he said, making cell phone calls. 300 firemen were missing, 78 police officers. He looked stricken, and heartbroken. I cried more. I crept outside for a cigarette, and heard planes fly by overhead -- I panicked first, remembering that there weren't supposed to be any planes in the sky now, and then realized that they were too large and too fast to be commercial planes -- military planes, flying by. They continued most of the night. There is one passing overhead right now, in fact. I went to bed and prayed that, when I woke up this morning, none of it would have happened.

Today, it felt real. It had sunk in a bit, I think. MIT held a blood drive, and I went and tried to give blood -- the nurse wasn't able to get a vein in my arm. She left three large holes probing, because I wouldn't let her stop. I wanted to do something, anything, to help. She finally gave up and said I just couldn't do it, the vein was too deep in my arm. While she worked, I watched SWAT teams storm the Westin Hotel in Copley Square, here in Boston. I still don't know what was happening there. The whole room full of people was silent, everyone watching to see what was going to happen next. There was an assembly for students, faculty, and staff -- I stayed there long enough for a minute of silence, and for a prayer, and then left -- I didn't want to stay and talk about it in a small group, which was what was planned. I didn't want to talk about it at all. I thought about just going home -- sneaking out an hour early, and just getting away from Boston -- but I ended up going back to work. On my way home tonight, I saw so many American flags hanging from houses and businesses. They were almost all at half-staff, and every one made me cry again.

I wasn't in New York, and I know so many other people have written entries about yesterday -- many of them were there, and lived through the attack. I am so thankful that my friends are okay. If someone close to you was hurt, or died, I am so sorry. I am praying for you, and thinking of you. I can't think about it at all without crying.

Suburbia?

So. I am moved! I abandoned Chelsea for the 'burbs on Saturday, and so far, I'm liking it a whole lot. It's so quiet at night, all you can hear are crickets chirping. No car alarms, blaring stereos, screaming drunken people, suspicious popping sounds that you tell yourself are just firecrackers... And the people smile and say hi to you, instead of glaring at you suspiciously!

It is a good thing that Patrick works out, though, since it was just him, me, and my mom lugging my crap from the third floor apartment. Poor Patrick got to carry most of the heavy stuff -- I had been expecting my mom to pack up the last of my stuff, and clean, but it was much cooler outside my apartment than it was inside, so she sat on the curb in the breeze for quite a while. My poor cat was terribly confused and unhappy -- once we started moving furniture out, we shut her in her cat carrier. She cried and howled and thrashed around -- legs and tails and noses kept poking out of the holes in the carrier, and she managed to flip the whole thing over a couple of times. Poor kitty. Once we got to the new place, she was happy, though she wouldn't come downstairs for quite a while. If we were downstairs, she would sit at the top of the steps and cry, but I couldn't coax her down. Eventually I carried her down the stairs and plopped her in the living room, and that seemed to clear up her mental confusion. Now, she's happy as can be -- she's checked out all the windowsills, sniffed everything in the apartment thoroughly, found loads of places to hide... and she seems to adore Patrick. She camps outside his bedroom door, and follows him around meowing at him...

My commute is decent -- longer than from Chelsea, but not nearly so crowded. The bus ride is actually relaxing. Plenty of time to listen to music or read (or sleep, as I too often do in the mornings...)

Other than the move... work is busy. The new semester has started -- they should really figure out some way of easing us back into the school year from the slow pace of summer. It's just not right to have hundreds of confused new students descend on you all of a sudden, when you're used to a lazy sort of pace.

I start school again tomorrow -- last class, and then I'm done! I am currently waiting for my student loan information -- and, since I am an idiot, it may take a while to reach me. (I filled out a change-of-address card for the post office, and put the wrong address on it. Yes, I'm a moron. Shut up. I fixed it today. They have a preprinted form for that, which proves I am not the only idiot out there.)

My mom and my brother are doing well -- my mom's suspicious bug bite has nearly healed, though it has left a small scar. I think it was just a spider bite. My brother's leg got much worse, but he finally got a decent doctor to look at it, and got blood tests and good antibiotics, and he seems to be on the mend. I haven't heard from him lately, but since he generally calls only when something is wrong, no news is good news!

And now, I am off to hunt up some dinner.