Something About September

Watching the 24 hour news coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is rather like a flashback for me. Once again I am perched in front of the television watching events unfold that are affecting the present and future of our entire people. Once again thousands of people could be dead, and thousands more are suffering. Once again I feel as if I am in the grip of something tremendously powerful that I am helpless to influence or change. Once again I feel like like things are rapidly changing, that I am watching events that are truly milestones in our history and that will have ramifications as yet undreamed of. Once again I feel like curling up in bed and watching hours and hours of old sitcoms as comfort food for the soul, as their totemic power will hopefully fend off the freight train- like advance of this new terrible world.

And once again, it is September.

I can still recall with crystal clarity where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the attacks on September 11. It was a Tuesday, of course, and I was scheduled to take our new kitten, Punky (discovered in our shed just four weeks previously) to the vet for a thorough checkup.

I never made it.

I came downstairs at around eleven thirty CST. I worked second shift then, and rarely arose early. My mom was watching the news, as she usually did, and my brother was down there too, which was sort of unusual. They both were very quiet and just pointed to the TV screen. I watched, and someone, probably my mom, told me that someone had flown two planes into the World Trade Center. By that time, they had both collapsed. It was unthinkable. Then she told me that another plane had flown into the Pentagon. Someone was not kidding around; they were trying to destroy America, and it was happening right now.

I had never thought or realized we were so vulnerable. And the thought of using planes as weapons...it was so insidious and horrible. Our own planes being used against us. And then came the numbers...50,000 people in both buildings, and they had both fallen to the ground...no one knew how many were in there initially or how many had gotten out.


It was just a sickening, nightmarish spiral down into areas that no one had ever considered or dreamt of. And the awful questions of what came next were unavoidable. Were there more planes up there poised to dive into our cities, our people? What other schemes were broiling even now...chemical weapons, anthrax in the subways, dirty bombs in suitcases?

People in my hometown starting trying to stock up on gas, predictably in a panic. Everyone at work was eerily silent and subdued, the normal petty in-fighting and squabbling kept to a minimum as everyone tried to internalize the enormity of the events unfolding. People who didn't know who the vice president was were now suddenly news junkies, monitoring progress of the rescuers and desperate for information on what exactly was happening and what we were going to do about it.

And in the midst of all the fear and shock, something rather heartening happened. People started being nice to each other. I noticed it first in the stores, where customers were actually looking each other in the eye and saying "hello" and smiling. It was comforting, as if we all suddenly realized that there were other people around us, breathing the same air, walking the same ground, dreaming the same dreams and dealing with the same problems. Finally we all seemed to remember that this is all our country, our planet, and that we have a common stake in things. One of the most ironic things about the attacks was that in seeking to destroy America, Bin Laden and his acolytes had actually succeeded in restoring a sense of community in America. In one of his propaganda rantings, he stated that now "America was full of fear, from its North to its South, from its East to its West"...but what he hadn't calculated, apparently, was that we were also filled with rage, resolve and a growing strength that came from the natural instinct to defend what is yours, and perhaps most importantly, a common foe.

I remember driving through a neighboring town days later, and encountering a group of young women standing outside the fire department, holding a sign that said "Honk if you love America"...I honked, of course. It made me feel good. I've never been one to wear my patriotism on my sleeve, but it was really a reflection of how I felt right then. I do love America, for all my criticism of it, for all its myriad imperfections. And the attacks weren't just aimed at America's people, they were aimed at the way we live our lives, at frightening us into cowering down and denying ourselves the freedoms that defined us and that we all enjoyed and took for granted.

Well, screw that, I thought. Honk, honk!!!

I only wish that sense of community, that reawakening of our common bonds, had remained. Within a few short months, everything was back to normal. Republicans and Democrats wrestling in the gutter over whose "fault" 9/11 was, conflict over the Afghanistan war, lawyers creeping all over the place trying to find someone to sue, sharp disagreement over how to handle homeland security. Conflict and debate is of course, part of the American way, and is in fact the method by which we express ourselves and ultimately get things done. But as usual, the tone and tenor of the arguments served to undermine the wonderful "oneness" which had united us shortly after the attacks. Something very precious we had only recently rediscovered was once again, lost.

Now we again face some major challenges as a nation. Besides the ongoing struggle in Iraq and the wider issue of terrorism throughout the world, we are confronting natural disasaters that have killed and injured many of our citizens. Our economy is going to be abversely affected by these events, too, with gas prices climbing, unemployment in the affected areas skyrocketing, and the national treasury burdened now with the necessary task of helping these areas recover. There is also the threat of disease and long term poverty and displacement.

In short, it's a mess.

Americans are once again responding to their fellow citizens need, bonded again by a common problem. We are a generous people, and tragedies such as this always bring out that quality.

But this time I hope the unity sticks. I hope we don't slip back into the morass of finger pointing and the "us vs. them" mentality that seems to define our national debate lately. We have work to do, real work to help real people, and we have no time for that kind of nonsense. After all the issues have been addressed, all the people housed and the babies fed and the sick tended to and the hungry fed, then we can go about the necessary task of finding out what worked and what didn't in regards to our emergency responses. But ONLY then. It's like the news crews who stand by with a camera while someone is being beaten or injured by a mob...it's fine to record the event for posterity, but right now how about putting the camera down and HELPING THE GUY! Where are our priorities? Why is it so tempting to jump in and assign blame while people are still suffering? It's an imperfect world and there are always going to be mistakes made, but let's not let our prejudices and personal emnity overshadow the immediate needs. If I am standing on a rooftop surrounded by water and haven't eaten for three days, you really aren't helping me by trying to get people fired or passing a resolution or setting up a review committee or going on national TV and badmouthing everyone in charge. What I really need is a way OUT of my current predicament, thanks.

What part of "united we stand, divided we fall" do we not yet understand?