Softly, Softly

The defining way I think of animals, period...

but also...

an excellent description of today. Now we are 41 minutes past the midnight hour, so it is technically no longer Sept 11. That, for me, is a good thing.

This morning, the television showed endless portraits of Americans remembering 9/11 of 2001. I had been up for about 6 hours with relentless stomach cramps and sharp nausea, and being sleep deprived due to pain makes me extremely grumpy. As the M-Man (the fiance) used to be a volunteer firefighter for years (and was a firefighter before and after 9/11) he was very into watching the coverage. I couldn't. Despite being curled into him on the couch, I began to cry and couldn't stop. I demanded that we watch the segments of talking heads instead of the unending litany of names read by surviving family members, and kept my eyes closed and my head against his chest.

Eventually, he untangled himself and made us breakfast. I hid in the bathroom, yelled at the barking mini dogs, wrapped my chilled and sniffly self in layers of fleece clothes, and cocooned myself under the ugly couch comforter so that the words became a soft drone.

I didn't want to understand this. It plays a part in my family--my brother is at Westpoint (I suspect a no small part of this event in his decision)and my uncle was SF. On my mother's side of the family, military service is an expectation of the men. Women usually act as support. My mother was the first woman in her family to go to college, breaking the staff mold. From the age of eight/nine to thirteen/fourteen, all I dreamed of was being SF like my uncle. Bad events happened to me once in that time frame, and happened again at the 14 range, and my focus changed from dreaming of the future to surviving the present. I hid from the silent girl who ran the ridegelines in ratty sneakers, who drove herself to clock mileage barefoot in the snow to develop endurance. That innocent self, who dreamed of hunting, of serving, of dark miles with a gun and pack--that girl was not someone who could deal silently with the events that happened to me. That girl dreamed of blood and vengeance in a million scenarios. To keep sane, she had to be hidden.

Today I grieved, like that morning my senior year, for having to hide that girl. I longed for her single minded purpose, for the years of whipcord endurance I could have created in myself, and for the possibility of absolute sacrifice I could have made.

I know now that survival is sometimes the sole purpose--and name--of the game. That the choices I made then were the only choices that I could have made.

These memories lean out and capture me with their long, pointed fingers. I see flashbacks of that time and resist the need to run and hide. They wait for me in the long shadowed corners of the house, booby trapping the dark spaces of my mind. I walk softly around the edges of rooms, wary of becoming trapped in the old/new pain leering out from bookshelves, clothes, patterns of light on the floor.

This does not make today any easier.

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
~Isak Dineson