Some Days (2010)
(read at the University of Texas at El Paso's 9/11 commemoration in 2011)
There are some days that stay in our memories forever, clearer that yesterday. Mama would probably be able to describe the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, with folks huddled around the radio. My generation, the Baby Boomers, can recall every detail about the day a President was assassinated.
It was during second period French class that the announcement was broadcast over the intercom. Our teacher was Mrs. Jones, young and blonde and - she made it quite clear - teaching only until her husband graduated from medical school. She hated us, and now having taught for a zillion years, I can understand why: we were privileged, self-centered, spoiled, and we thought we owned the world. The principal turned the loudspeaker to Walter Cronkite’s announcement of President Kennedy’s death. Jimmy P. jumped up with a celebratory cheer - his family business was known to refuse Kennedy half-dollars - and Noel W.(1) stood with raised fists threatening Jimmy into silence out of who-knows-what sense of decency, we were so young, so innocent.
And now it is Nine-Eleven that takes us back to a day that we’ll always remember as we watched the horror in real time on live television, knowing then that the day would forever be a marker for permanent change: Before and After.
____________________________________
I woke up and turned on the t.v., and a building was burning. Ray was doing his morning ablutions at the bathroom sink, and I got his attention so we could both watch transfixed as the second tower was hit and news of a third plane hitting the Pentagon was reported. On the way to school a bit later, radio on, I stopped to buy a small television for my office. I had a meeting that morning, off campus at the personnel building where people were crowded around a television in someone’s office to keep up with unfolding events. The meeting wasn’t cancelled, and for half of it I had to listen to someone explaining my retirement benefits. Even on a good day I hate talking about, hearing about money, an aversion I inherited from my father who would walk out of a room when the subject came up. I eventually walked out of the meeting room, losing several thousands of dollars in long-term savings because of it, but I couldn’t stand to sit there and think about money while the world as we knew it changed out from under us.
Back on campus I met my classes but quickly dismissed them after students and I looked at each other, mute and stunned. The rest of that fateful day has vanished from memory, but for weeks afterward, whenever I wasn’t occupied with teaching, I lay in a fetal position with my face toward the back of the sofa, listening but not watching the t.v. news.
_______________________________________________
Then there are those rare days of personal memories, the kind that make you aware, moment by moment, of your particular and special viewpoint and significance: a birth, a death, a lover declaring his passion, a spouse telling you the marriage is over, a doctor with bad test results, or another one with good news. And sometimes it is a most ordinary day that commands your attention, that connects you to Now.
Maybe these are the best days of all.
I had a new job and a new office and I was good at what I was doing, and everything seemed to be coming together in meaningful balance and rightness. It was a clear, perfect fall morning, and I remember walking from one campus building to another with a conscious feeling of satisfaction, aware and grateful of my good fortune, and I remember thinking, How can it get better than this?
During a break between classes, I was washing my hands in the art department restroom, standing next to young students who were primping and chatting. One of them spoke to me over the sinks, making eye contact in the mirror: You look just like______. I can’t recall the woman’s name now [2], but then I and just about everyone else knew who she was; television had just introduced the first quiz show where people could make millions by answering trivial questions, and my supposed lookalike was the host. I’d never watched the show, but its advertisements were unavoidable, so I knew enough to picture her: petite, middle aged, British and schoolmarmy, with glasses, short hair, and a catch phrase that everyone recognized, something cruel, along the lines of LOSER. I was shocked. WHAT?? You think I look like that?? I remind you of her??? That t.v. hostess was mean.
Okay, I got it: I am short, and Anglo, and I wear glasses, and back then my hair was close-cropped, but still. It threw me, shook me up, interrupted my self-satisfied reverie. I went into the faculty office to get some reactions and reassurance - No, of course you don’t look like her - and finally, to laugh it off.
I taught my classes, and the lovely day went on as usual, with only a slight burr under my saddle reminding me of how I might look to people who don’t really know me. I was fifty at the time, a “young fifty,” I thought. How I looked as I aged was a constant, though mostly subconscious, topic for me and my middle-aged friends. Since I felt fabulous, happy and charmed, I figured that is what the world saw as I breezed through it. Silly me.
When I left school that day I walked through the Student Center to get to my car. There were booths set up offering clubs to join, cookies to buy in support of worthy causes, and free samples of various products. A young man offered me something that I reflexively declined and then turned back to accept: shaving foam, Ray might like it. He handed me the sample and said, as an afterthought, You look just like Carol Burnett.
What???
For the record, I love Carol Burnett, at least I did when she was a young t.v. star. I’d wanted to be her when I was twelve or so: funny and in the spotlight, getting laughs, what could be better? Stage fright and basic insecurity ruled out my ever actually being Carol Burnett, but to look like her? Horsey-faced? Goofy? Surely not!
On the long drive home I had time to replay the day and to compose an essay about aging, appearance, and the rest. I would write the day’s story, I told myself, and send it to my college friends who, I knew, would recognize themselves in it and laugh, aware as we all were of our fading youthful cuteness.
I never did write my friends.
Because before I got home I had an errand to run, a visit to make, a person to see, and what should have been a simple conversation turned into a huge argument. There’s a long story to this, of course, but I’ve put it away in a file titled Toxic, never to be opened, since the feelings that day - so negative, so strong - might come back to me in an unwelcome heated flash. Take my word for it: I’ve never, ever been so angry. Never. Ever. I’d ended the disastrous visit in complete frustration, saying, at top volume, so out of character: This conversation is going the wrong way, I’m out of here; and the young woman - a girl really, younger than my daughter, thirty years younger than I, talking to me in such a way, how rude, what a bully - yelled back, Don’t you dare walk away, you started this, and - daring to walk away - I said in a voice I hardly recognized, Well, now I'm ending it.
All the way home I raged, talking out loud: Who does she think she is? Who does she think I am? I cussed nonstop, out of the car and into the house, and finally at maximum volume for Ray to hear, I hollered: I HATE her, I HATE her!
My wonderfully ordinary day, so sweet, had done a complete 180 and was spoiled forever. It was still memorable, yes indeed, but it had become its flipside, horrid and poisonous. My blood pressure was off the charts, I wanted to KILL, and, quick, I needed a glass of wine. How did I ever calm down? How did I ever relax and ever, finally, go to sleep?
I know I did, I must have, but I don’t remember.
Because the very next day, in the morning, the morning after, I woke up and turned on the t.v., and a building was burning. It was 9/11.
________________________________________________________
(1) For fifty years I credited Noel W. for this moment of integrity, but he recently told me he was that year at a military school. I wonder who stood up to Jimmy P.?
[2] Anne Robinson was the tv host. If you Google her images, be sure to find one BEFORE HER FACE LIFT which she apparently had at the end of 2001.
It was during second period French class that the announcement was broadcast over the intercom. Our teacher was Mrs. Jones, young and blonde and - she made it quite clear - teaching only until her husband graduated from medical school. She hated us, and now having taught for a zillion years, I can understand why: we were privileged, self-centered, spoiled, and we thought we owned the world. The principal turned the loudspeaker to Walter Cronkite’s announcement of President Kennedy’s death. Jimmy P. jumped up with a celebratory cheer - his family business was known to refuse Kennedy half-dollars - and Noel W.(1) stood with raised fists threatening Jimmy into silence out of who-knows-what sense of decency, we were so young, so innocent.
And now it is Nine-Eleven that takes us back to a day that we’ll always remember as we watched the horror in real time on live television, knowing then that the day would forever be a marker for permanent change: Before and After.
____________________________________
I woke up and turned on the t.v., and a building was burning. Ray was doing his morning ablutions at the bathroom sink, and I got his attention so we could both watch transfixed as the second tower was hit and news of a third plane hitting the Pentagon was reported. On the way to school a bit later, radio on, I stopped to buy a small television for my office. I had a meeting that morning, off campus at the personnel building where people were crowded around a television in someone’s office to keep up with unfolding events. The meeting wasn’t cancelled, and for half of it I had to listen to someone explaining my retirement benefits. Even on a good day I hate talking about, hearing about money, an aversion I inherited from my father who would walk out of a room when the subject came up. I eventually walked out of the meeting room, losing several thousands of dollars in long-term savings because of it, but I couldn’t stand to sit there and think about money while the world as we knew it changed out from under us.
Back on campus I met my classes but quickly dismissed them after students and I looked at each other, mute and stunned. The rest of that fateful day has vanished from memory, but for weeks afterward, whenever I wasn’t occupied with teaching, I lay in a fetal position with my face toward the back of the sofa, listening but not watching the t.v. news.
_______________________________________________
Then there are those rare days of personal memories, the kind that make you aware, moment by moment, of your particular and special viewpoint and significance: a birth, a death, a lover declaring his passion, a spouse telling you the marriage is over, a doctor with bad test results, or another one with good news. And sometimes it is a most ordinary day that commands your attention, that connects you to Now.
Maybe these are the best days of all.
I had a new job and a new office and I was good at what I was doing, and everything seemed to be coming together in meaningful balance and rightness. It was a clear, perfect fall morning, and I remember walking from one campus building to another with a conscious feeling of satisfaction, aware and grateful of my good fortune, and I remember thinking, How can it get better than this?
During a break between classes, I was washing my hands in the art department restroom, standing next to young students who were primping and chatting. One of them spoke to me over the sinks, making eye contact in the mirror: You look just like______. I can’t recall the woman’s name now [2], but then I and just about everyone else knew who she was; television had just introduced the first quiz show where people could make millions by answering trivial questions, and my supposed lookalike was the host. I’d never watched the show, but its advertisements were unavoidable, so I knew enough to picture her: petite, middle aged, British and schoolmarmy, with glasses, short hair, and a catch phrase that everyone recognized, something cruel, along the lines of LOSER. I was shocked. WHAT?? You think I look like that?? I remind you of her??? That t.v. hostess was mean.
Okay, I got it: I am short, and Anglo, and I wear glasses, and back then my hair was close-cropped, but still. It threw me, shook me up, interrupted my self-satisfied reverie. I went into the faculty office to get some reactions and reassurance - No, of course you don’t look like her - and finally, to laugh it off.
I taught my classes, and the lovely day went on as usual, with only a slight burr under my saddle reminding me of how I might look to people who don’t really know me. I was fifty at the time, a “young fifty,” I thought. How I looked as I aged was a constant, though mostly subconscious, topic for me and my middle-aged friends. Since I felt fabulous, happy and charmed, I figured that is what the world saw as I breezed through it. Silly me.
When I left school that day I walked through the Student Center to get to my car. There were booths set up offering clubs to join, cookies to buy in support of worthy causes, and free samples of various products. A young man offered me something that I reflexively declined and then turned back to accept: shaving foam, Ray might like it. He handed me the sample and said, as an afterthought, You look just like Carol Burnett.
What???
For the record, I love Carol Burnett, at least I did when she was a young t.v. star. I’d wanted to be her when I was twelve or so: funny and in the spotlight, getting laughs, what could be better? Stage fright and basic insecurity ruled out my ever actually being Carol Burnett, but to look like her? Horsey-faced? Goofy? Surely not!
On the long drive home I had time to replay the day and to compose an essay about aging, appearance, and the rest. I would write the day’s story, I told myself, and send it to my college friends who, I knew, would recognize themselves in it and laugh, aware as we all were of our fading youthful cuteness.
I never did write my friends.
Because before I got home I had an errand to run, a visit to make, a person to see, and what should have been a simple conversation turned into a huge argument. There’s a long story to this, of course, but I’ve put it away in a file titled Toxic, never to be opened, since the feelings that day - so negative, so strong - might come back to me in an unwelcome heated flash. Take my word for it: I’ve never, ever been so angry. Never. Ever. I’d ended the disastrous visit in complete frustration, saying, at top volume, so out of character: This conversation is going the wrong way, I’m out of here; and the young woman - a girl really, younger than my daughter, thirty years younger than I, talking to me in such a way, how rude, what a bully - yelled back, Don’t you dare walk away, you started this, and - daring to walk away - I said in a voice I hardly recognized, Well, now I'm ending it.
All the way home I raged, talking out loud: Who does she think she is? Who does she think I am? I cussed nonstop, out of the car and into the house, and finally at maximum volume for Ray to hear, I hollered: I HATE her, I HATE her!
My wonderfully ordinary day, so sweet, had done a complete 180 and was spoiled forever. It was still memorable, yes indeed, but it had become its flipside, horrid and poisonous. My blood pressure was off the charts, I wanted to KILL, and, quick, I needed a glass of wine. How did I ever calm down? How did I ever relax and ever, finally, go to sleep?
I know I did, I must have, but I don’t remember.
Because the very next day, in the morning, the morning after, I woke up and turned on the t.v., and a building was burning. It was 9/11.
________________________________________________________
(1) For fifty years I credited Noel W. for this moment of integrity, but he recently told me he was that year at a military school. I wonder who stood up to Jimmy P.?
[2] Anne Robinson was the tv host. If you Google her images, be sure to find one BEFORE HER FACE LIFT which she apparently had at the end of 2001.
