Remembering

There is a disposable camera somewhere in my house filled with pictures taken from a trip to San Francisco six years ago. I’ve never developed the photos. But the memories of that trip aren’t going anywhere…

On September 10, 2001, I had flown to San Francisco to attend a political affairs training. It was my first trip to SF and my first business trip at my new job upon finishing graduate school in May. I distinctly remember the warm breeze blowing on my face during the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel; I also remember the feeling of excitement and anticipation.

When I woke early the next morning, I flipped on the TV to catch Good Morning America. Instead, it was Peter Jennings. A plane? Hit what? Washington? New York? A plane? Hit what?

It was still dark in SF. So maybe I was dreaming. Certainly I was missing some critical piece of information that would make sense of what the pictures on the TV were showing. I instinctively picked up the phone and called my friend Shawna. She is the friend you turn to in these types of situations. She'd know what was going on--she works on Capitol Hill after all. She'd make sense of it all.

"Shawna? Is this really happening?"

"It is. We don't know much. I'm okay. My brother [who lives in NYC] is okay. It's going to be okay."

We didn't know much. We didn’t even know about the plane that was headed back to DC. I called my Mom just as the second tower collapsed. I wanted so badly for her to tell me I was dreaming. Couldn’t this all just be a bad dream caused by late-night cheese pizza?

But duty called, so I dressed and went to the first session of the training, where we all sat like zombies for several hours pretending it mattered if your political action committee was a success. The severity of the situation sunk in when the next speaker couldn't get to the hotel because the bridges were closed to traffic. And the training was cancelled.

I walked numbly to the hotel lobby where several TVs were set up and people sat together and watched the news. We tried desperately to somehow wrap our minds around what had happened...to some how unlock a rational explanation for what was going on.

Then I wanted to talk to everyone I was close to…everyone I knew in Boston and Washington DC needed to be accounted for…just to be certain everyone was safe. I remember talking to Briony, to Sumreen…to Scott…to Shawna again…then my Mom…then Rachel…then Scott…then Sumreen…then Shawna again…just to hear everyone's voice...to be comforted...to somehow feel like the world didn't just turn upside down.

But it had.

I needed to get out of the hotel and took a trolley down to the wharf. I know there is a photo from the trolley ride in that camera. I walked around. Numb. Perhaps a hot fudge sundae would cheer me. It didn’t. Maybe looking at the seals would distract me. They didn’t. So I just kept walking around. There was an eerie silence as all planes had been grounded and there was no traffic.

It was hard to know how to act, what to feel. In some ways, I just wanted to sit in my room and watch the news. But that was too hard for me. So I went out into San Francisco. I wandered through Barnes & Noble. I got my brows waxed. I know, I know…my brows waxed. But it was actually comforting. Not so much the hot wax part, but connecting with the people in the salon. Again, to somehow feel like life was normal.

Finally on Friday, I went to the airport. I was willing to get on any plane headed east. It was the first day there was any real air travel allowed. There was such a long line. People trying to get home. There was a flight headed for Memphis and then hopefully I’d find a flight to Detroit from there.

On the flight to Memphis, I felt oddly safe, even though it seems like an airplane is the last place you’d feel safe after 9-11. With a row to myself, I stretched out and fell asleep. It was the first peaceful sleep in days.

And so I made it home. Unlike the people we'll remember who were traveling from Boston and D.C…or those going about their daily activities in New York City.

A couple days later, I was driving on Jefferson Avenue and there was a gorgeous sunset—one of those sunsets that just make you want to shout out to the Artist who created it.

But I couldn’t. My heart was broken. I couldn’t find hope. I think 9-11 was the first time I really understood the evil in the world. And for awhile I struggled to remember, to cling to the fact that Jesus has already overcome it.

The week before 9-11, I had been in Wichita, Kansas visiting some dear friends from college. Jackie and Ethan had sent me home with a CD of some of their favorite songs, including the Israel Kamakawiwo’ole version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World.

One sleepless night shortly after 9-11, I was wrestling with what I know to be true, even in the midst of what felt like such dark times. And as that song played, I found myself asking for God’s grace to bind up the hurt and to use my life to breathe His hope into a hurting world.

There is a line in Anne Lamott’s latest book “Grace (Eventually)” that says: “I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things…Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog, slog, and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

And so it was…and so it is…and the hope came back…and it really is a wonderful world.