eleventh

It was really warm for that time of the year. I definitely recall that. But, other than the Indian like summer, the rest was all ordinary. I love concocting sweeping landscapes filled with all sorts of lushness and endless amounts of detailed descriptions. But, when it comes to my own personal reality, I suffer from the same poor memory as most middle aged folks. I wish I could go back ten, fifteen or even twenty years and tell you what color shirt I was wearing when my father took me to my first big league ball game. I would love nothing more that to be able to close my eyes and with total clarity describe each and every specific detail of the last time I saw my father alive, or either of my grandmothers for that matter. But, I can't. Few of us really can. Oh, some fill in the blanks here and there. There's an awful lot of embellishing that tends to happen. Im not really sure why, but i suppose we all want to hang on to certain memories so very much that, where blanks appear...we just fill them in? Eventually, the line between the real and the filled in parts is so blurred that even you, or whoever, cant' tell them apart anymore. We've all heard of the trophy bass that got away, or the time your buddy outran the police doing something like "a humdred and twenty F'ing miles per hour!", and who amongst us doesnt have an athletic endeavor or two that has been....shall we say, refined? Some memories, however, aren't so pleasant and as much as we would love to forget all about them, or to lessen their realism, their rawness, they just sit there. Sit in the recesses of your mind, just waiting for the next opportunity to rear themselves and scare the living hell out of you. It is these memories, these times that dont call for any embellsihing. So, when i say it was hot....I'm not telling a fable, or beginning the next great American novel, i'm telling you that it was unseasonably warm for Semptember, but the sun was shining, the sky was as blue as the waters from any number of the oceans we all daydream about, and I was preparing for another mundane and all too routine-y day of work.

It must have been 7 something in the morning and I hadnt been up for more than a few minutes when i was informed by my wife that a plane had hit the world trade center. "Good Morning America" was on in the background and I remember stumbling over to gain a better vantage point, because in the scope of boring and mundane, a plane of any kind hitting the world trade center just didnt fit. And, I remember thinking that exact thought....In this day and age of air traffic and technology and all that crap, how in God's green earth did a small plane hit the damn tower? Those were the early reports, that it was a small plane and the speculation was that maybe it was a student pilot and his or her instructor and something had obviously gone tragically awry. My oldest son was preparing for what I assume was a boring and mundane day of kindergarten. My twins, not yet two years old slept through what was to become the most horrific day in the history of our country, at least in any of our lifetime. It was time to hop to it, as my grindstone was awaiting, so it wasnt' too hard to tear away from the television and get into the shower. I was in the shower when the second plane hit. I got out of the shower, and life had changed forever. Of course, I still at this point, wet and drying myself off frantically in order to get back to the TV, didnt' grasp the enormity of the situation. But, I think i speak for just about every single American who was alive that day, we all knew almost instantly that you could toss out any idea of an accident. The images on the screen in my quaint and eerily quiet living room were like something out of a movie. It was intoxicating, but not in a good way. Not in the way that is all friday night at the local bar with your buddies and you're laughing and carrying on and the beer and the stories are flowing and everyone is smiling and forgetting all worries and stresses, at least for one night. No, it was more like the next morning when all the worries and stresses you tried to drink away the night before come home to roost and you pry your head off the pillow like a piece of just chewed gum from off your shoe after stepping on some overheated and skillet like asphalt. I couldn't tear myself away. Each minute brought new images, some new witness, some new piece of information, most of which turned out to be pure garbage. And, then came the rumors. All of a sudden, there were threats of terror from sea to shining sea. Somehow, amidst all this newness, this sense of  "what is going on here", I had to get to the mall. My son had to get to kindergarten, and life would surely get in the way of this far off terror. So, I left. That was one surreal drive to Richmond Heights, Mo. The whole "work" experience was just that...surreal. I got to the Galleria and, while it was early, it still had the feel of a funeral. And, a sparsely attended one, at that. There were no mall walkers. There were no "rise of the gate" shoppers. There weren't even any early birds with merchandise returns in hand, and they are the most diligent and undeterred of the retail public. I remember thinking, even upon walking in, that normalcy would still prevail at some point. But, the sands were now pouring out of that hourglass. After checking into my store and turning all the lights on, I had to find a TV. I believe it was Athlete's Foot? I can't recall each detail, but there was a store on the lower level that had a television going and there were a small gathering of us retail warriors hovering around it, taking in the horror being broadcast to the world. Surreal. By this point, we all realized that this was no ordinary day. We had woke up on a glorious and just another September morning. By the time the mall was set to open its warm and kind of greedy arms to the greater metro citizens, we were actors...bit actors in the darkest day any of has ever heard of, let alone been privy to.
Some way, some how...we opened the store. There was no music. No amped up and over aggressive sales people. More of the funeral procession. I believe we actually sold a few items? I cant' for the life of me think of why we did. I cant imagine being a consumer in that situation, on that day and wandering to the mall and thinking that I just had to have a new hat, or a pair of shiny new sneakers. Maybe we sold crap to the oblivious or clueless. Perhaps, just perhaps there were still souls out there who had escaped all of the coverage, all of the in your face media regurgitation that was in full swing. As far as us employees, it was back to that surreal word. These were uncharted waters. This wasnt a case of checking the snowfall and deciding when to pull the plug in the name of safety. This was maybe the most idyllic weather that we ever get in St.Louis in September? No, this was a national thing, a farther reaching story, one that affected every single living and breathing human in the country. Think about that. What else has ever, or will ever lay claim to a statement like that? I would love to tell you that by this point in the proceedings, on the cusp of the mall being closed for the day, much as every other mall and most commercial businesses around the country were, that I was filled with a sense of patriotism. Or that I was screaming with all of the breath in my lungs that it was time for revenge, time for some good old fashioned eye for an eye. No, I was scared out of my mind. Inside I was trembling. My boss at the time, and I'll never forget her but I won't name her here, called to converse about the craziness, as well as the logistics involved with closing the mall, and the store on this most surreal and odd of days. And, out of nowhere, I just broke down. I'll never forget asking her...."why is this happening?" Neither of us answered. And right then, I had an overwhelming desire to hold my kids. I"ll be we all did. As much as this post was going to go in a few different directions, and perhaps in the near future, I'll open those wounds, pull off those band-aids....it just kind of morphed into a sense of rememberance. I'll always remember. I'll also always remember that national feeling of pride and patriotism that was so strong, so solidified, in those first days. Do you still feel that way?