everyone remembers
I've got mixed feelings about September 11th.  Of course I was horrified by what had happened: the word came through as I was in a computer training course for work, and not much else got learned that day. For the rest of the week we had to use the instructor's time and plough through as if we were normal, which wasn't easy.  Bob was home with the girls; Jean was almost four, Eleanor, eighteen months.  I remember telling Jean that there had been a horrible accident, a plane crash, and lots of people were so badly hurt that they died. I was so relieved that I didn't have to explain further, because even then she thought deeply about things and asked hard questions, and who wants to tell a four-year-old that there are people in the world so evil that they killed thousands of innocent people on purpose?  We had no television, so it was days before Bob saw video footage of the events (I watched some of it at the training facility).  The newspaper for that day and several days after had nothing else in it but photos and columns about the tragedy; radio, the same.  It was everywhere and on everyone's minds, and at the same time so unreal that it couldn't possibly have happened.  If only that were true.
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The worst thing I feel is that I didn't help nearly as much as I could have.  My church, St. David's, was one of the facilities housing stranded passengers, and we could have gone to help feed, house, and manage stuff for the people sleeping on the floor in the church hall.  We didn't, though, for the whole week or so, and I have many excuses.  The kids were so small that they would have needed all of Bob's attention, leaving him visible onsite but not free to help out; with so many people and their belongings around, the church was not kidproof, safe either for the children or from them; I had to work, and couldn't take time off since I was on training; Bob was babysitting a friend's child and didn't feel right about taking the extra child with him up to church; we didn't want to expose Jeanie to visuals and conversations about the attack, and to deal with her needless upset and disruption.  So we stayed out of the way, and for ages and ages - still, in fact - St. David's talks about that week, what everyone did, the people they met, how everyone pulled together, went around the neighbourhood to find bedding and fans and other necessities, how there was a concert and visitors sang and played music and everyone cried.  It was a big deal for a little church.  It makes me uncomfortable and grumpy, because I'm sure there was something I could have done, but didn't, and there are memories that I don't share with them.  I'm also really tired of hearing about it, since it gives me the disturbing feeling of self-congratulation except that it's not me that being self-congratulated, so I can't protest.
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Two things bother me most about the remembrances of September 11th.  I can't think about the thousands who died - it's no more real to me than the thousands who die every day in horrific circumstances, war-torn or otherwise.  I do think particularly about the experiences of the passengers stranded in the Atlantic provinces.  I understand the passengers being grateful for the help that was offered from the communities - it must have been horrible to be one of them, not matter where you landed.  But people were stranded all over the world... is this the only place that people were treated decently and with compassion?  Was that such a foreign experience for those people?  And, if so, were they moved to go home again and find or make communities that help each other?
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Secondly, what is the root cause of the whole thing?  Hate.  Has the world learned, and worked to decrease the amount of hate in the world so it won't happen again?  On the contrary, the world has battened down the hatches, and the hate only grows.  There must be something we can do, but it goes on and on.
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