Escaping Suburbia

A “where were you” kind of day. Reflection felt… urgent today. Is it because we are on the verge of something here? Because we stand poised on the brink of fear and hope?

Seven years ago, I was working in Southern California and carpooling with a friend. We left the radio off in the car on our way to work so we could chat. I hate that we laughed and joked that morning, oblivious. We entered the office and were confronted by the television, conference room filled with people. I asked what was going on. Someone said a plane flew into the World Trade Center. I let out one of those shocked, incredulous laughs. I still remember the shocked laugh, because, what the fuck? And then the second plane hit.

Our executives were at a hotel near LAX, at a meeting. They called it off and came home because no one knew where it was safe to be, really. No one knew what the hell was happening or why. Friends at work were trying to reach their loved-ones by cell phone, but all the circuits were busy.

I sat in my office and cried.

I went home and turned on the news. And then I turned it off because people were jumping and I sit here now with tears in my eyes not quite blurring that remembered vision enough.

That night, the skies were so quiet. So strange for an area with a big airport. Until about 2am when the military buzzed very low overhead, scaring everyone.

I went to work for our NY headquarters a couple of years later, and I heard the stories of the people there waiting for the train to come, carrying their loved ones back home. The stories of the ones who didn’t come.

I found this memorial in a field in Salem, our very first month in Oregon. I felt kind of jaded about it, when I first saw it from the highway. Oh, flags. How obvious. How rah rah and patriotic. There were some ugly things done in the name of patriotism in the five years past. But I was wrong, it was overwhelming and affecting.

I remember.