Thursday, September 13, 2001

Most people close to me know that I am tremendously sentimental and a bit of a pack rat. On mornings where I wake up a little blue, nothing gets me back on track more than digging through memories. Sometimes reading an old journal will suffice, but the ultimate pack rat cache is kept on a high, deep shelf in our guest room closet. I have to ask MJC for help to pull it down.

I have always had this notion that I should hold on to banal little relics of my life at the time. I guess I have a vague idea that my unborn children might want to know what things were like. I would love to see this kind of stuff from Dee's life for example. What did she wear? How much did things cost? Who were her best friends? What were her favorite restaurants?

I keep most of my treasures in a plastic Tupperware container nearly the size of a bathtub, filled with: paper scraps, photos, old pictures, match books, receipts, love letters and emails.

Yesterday, I found some really great loot:
A birthday card from my pal Catherine from 2001
Some baby pictures of me - MJC says it looks like I was interrupted in all of my baby pictures - like I seem a bit put off to stop and have my picture taken.
A photo of me and three childhood friends at the birthday where we all dressed up like Madonna
A recipe for an Autumn Salad that looks really delicious.
An email from Mary Garber about my graduation
Catherine's zine, Loser Force (1999)
And lastly, an email between me and dad with email addresses neither of us still has, writing about September 11. I was a bit on a mission yesterday, to try to see if I had these emails because I wanted to remember how all this began. How I felt about our President, our country, and our place in the world.

Here are my words from 9/13/01 12:09 PM
Hi Dad,
I feel like my faith in the goodness of people was jeopardized. I have been impressed with the American response of support to this tragedy, but I was terrified of the news pictures featuring Palestinians dancing and celebrating in the streets. Every person I know has donated or is trying to donate both blood and money to the Red Cross, so much so that there is a back up in SF and they are not able to receive more blood donations until October.That impresses me.
The pictures of the weary NYFD and NYPD refusing to leave the scene of the towers until they find more people alive impresses me and the support of the citizens of NY for these men impresses me. I think the community has come together.
But with 30,000 body bags being ordered for these bodies and body parts alike, I wonder what we can do to punish who did this. I have never lived through a *real* war & I cant imagine becoming involved in a war over this...I would hate to repeat this ridiculous desensitivity to innocent human life with a 30 day air strike.
I wish on some level. that our military could go in to combat -- face to face with these monsters and show them that this kind of behavior is intolerable. But I am scared too. I am scared of an enemy so irrational.
It was obviously a well designed plan, that could have included Americans. I know it included our planes and our flight training programs, but I cant imagine that while I dawdle around writing astrology promos and suffering over new crushes in bars with groups of friends, there was a group of people planning this catastrophic event-- as Bush called it -- an act of war.
There has been a concern for xenophobic reaction and I imagine to some extent it is a threat. I have also heard some very uneducated statements condemning Arabs everywhere.
I wonder if you have heard the story of the firetruck unearthed from the rubble this morning. They managed to evacuate this truck, still under floors of concrete and steel debris and found that all five firefighters were still alive. Yes. God does work in mysterious ways.
Perhaps this is our wake-up call and a call to kindness and cooperation among Americans after the decreased solidarity and waning Patriotism that ensued following a very close presidential election. But it also could be the beginning of WWIII and that is what I fear the most. I wonder if it is worth it and if there is any other solution.

Love you Mean It.