Seven Years Later

My friend, Akemi, who also has twin boys, "tagged" me for a game of "remember when."  It's a blogging game where you detail what you were doing when certain significant events happened.  Unfortunately, I can't remember where I was for the majority of the events, so I'll have to gracefully decline.

I do know where I was during the attack of the Twin Towers in 2001.  I was sleeping.  In fact, it wasn't until Barton came knocking on my door around 10am that I had any knowledge of these tragic events.  As a little background, on 9/11/01, I was a "freelance consultant" which is a euphemism for "laid off."  Like many people in San Francisco after the demise or perhaps it should be called "flattening" of the dot.com industry, I was out of work.  The dot-com boom that brought me to San Francisco in 1999 for advertising work was officially over and we were all holding wakes for accounts such as "Petstore.com" and "HomeImprovement.com."  There were absolutely no jobs in San Francisco at the time and I figured this was as good a time as any to catch up on my beauty sleep.  Hence, the sleeping. 

When Barton roused me and told me that "planes had crashed into the World Trade Center," I, in my bleary-eyed state, could not for the life of me figure out what he was saying.  At first, I thought it was some sort of accident.  In pre-9-11, the synapses in my brain were not wired to think "terrorism" as the cause of disasters like they are now.  Like a lot of people, I think of the time before this tragedy as a time of innocence and naivety.

As the day progressed, the unfolding of the events was surreal.  Barton's family friend from Honolulu, Mary Ho, had a daughter, Heather, who was a pastry chef at Windows of the World, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center.  Mary Ho lived right around the corner from us in SF and we went over to her apartment that afternoon for moral support.  Under the circumstances, Mary was in good spirits, if somewhat dazed over what had happened.  At this time, it was too early to know what had happened to her daughter.  The fact that Heather started work at 5am every morning to prep for the day was not a good sign, but one always hopes against hope.  We later learned that Heather died that day, as did countless other innocent people.

The aftermath of 9-11 was a time of mourning and also self-reflection.  Times of tragedy and grief are intertwined with both haze and clarity.  Unfortunately, it often takes loss for people to appreciate what they have.  On a national level, patriotism was at an all-time high and it was beautiful to witness this sense of unity with one's country.  On a personal level, the grieving made people realize that life is short so what am I doing with my life?  There was an urban myth that birth rates spiked nine months after 9-11, but Snopes debunked this.  For every person post 9-11 who decided that now was as good a time as any to get married/have a baby, there was another person who decided to move on from a nowhere relationship.  Both may have been spurred on by the tragedy, but not necessarily in the way that was reported.

Seven years after 9-11, our stats are staggering:

- one week after 9-11, Barton and I moved in together
- five months later, we were engaged
- one year later, we were married
- five pregnancies
- two early miscarriages
- lost two babies
- had three wonderful children
- lived in 3 cities in 2 states
- 5 moves

There is a quote by Theodore Roethke that says, " In a dark time, the eye begins to see."  I'm not saying that I attribute the events of my life to the tragedy that occurred on 9-11.  But, as someone who has lost many loved ones, I feel that these losses shape who we are and how we react to life.  When I worked in advertising, I remember having co-workers/stress junkies say how calm I always seemed in the midst of chaos.  It's not that I didn't feel stressed, but I would just put it in perspective.  Particularly after my mom died, I just couldn't get that worked up about the "small stuff" of advertising.

On the 7th anniversary of the tragedy, we reflect on those who we lost and how this influenced our nation and us as individuals.  Post-9-11 was indeed a dark time.  I'm sure we all have stories about how it shaped our perceptions, and ideas on how to "see" in a way that will foster both personal and global peace.

Comments

[Betsy]

Great post, Lisa. Jorge and I were actually on a plane returning from our honeymoon that morning of 9/11.