"Miracle of Coffee"

So. The last item I have that I tangibly associate with my grandpa is gone.

His Nescafé cup, which was made of plain glass and had the world and Nescafé etched on. I can still see him sitting there at the breakfast table. We had those bowls that were huge for breakfast and well, I can see it, but the words to describe it aren't coming quick and I don't really have time to write this.

I can tell that I'm past the depression, maybe at a "zero" in the plus five, negative five scale, which means I'm normal, woo hoo! as I didn't cry. I picked up the pieces, put them in an empty Kleenex box, and took the kitchen rug downstairs to beat out the shards that I couldn't see. I thought about taking a picture, but I'm too tired.

I'm still tempted, and I don't know if that's cuz I'm overly sentimental or that it really was the last Grandpa thing I had.

Grandma was the one who wrote cards, typed on greeting cards with her ancient typewriter, so I have stuff from her, and even a card with a magnet on the fridge. And she's only been gone three or four years--I can't remember exactly. Crap. But Grandpa has been gone since my senior year in college. And no one lives in Washington, NJ anymore, my aunt and uncle sold their house even before Grandma died.

So now I'm all awash in family memories and I have no dates to match up anything. My uncle died in 2001, I remember that b/c I was in grad school and it was a few months after 9/11. The last time we saw him alive was the weekend after 9/11. Imagine being in an airport in NY (I think it was JFK, but it could have been LaGuardia) that weekend. Everyone getting used to all the new security...there was an editorial in the NYT that day that I would love to retrieve.

Welll, time to go to work. I'm wearing my "pink is the new black" t-shirt.

God bless America, my home sweet home... (some scattered thoughts*)

Max and I talk about exotics (sometimes known as "invasive species") a lot. An exotic is a species that generally through human error or willfulness was brought to an area where it then either thrives and we don't notice (earthworms, I think) or it eats all the animals/vegetation because it has no natural predators. Today, on aquakids, for instance, the Rapa whelk was discussed--it belongs in the Black Sea, but the egg pods grab onto hard surfaces and so came on cargo boats and now are a menace to oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. After a work party that I attended with him this weekend, where his boss pressed me on "where are you from originally," I said to Max, those questions and the fact that I must then reveal that I spent a large part of the first decade of my life overseas makes me feel like an exotic. Perhaps not an invasive species, but something that wasn't here all along, something to ooh and ah over. Last night after dinner, he had 20 minutes before he had to go off to work, and so I pulled down my "Sarah Louise lives in Bonn" scrapbook, a creation my mother and I put together in second grade. I said, this is a part of my exotic past.

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Sometimes I think because I've lived other places and loved other places and been a representative for my country in some of those places that I am more patriotic. I don't actually think that's true, but on a day like today, I know that this country, my country is worth fighting for. It is Tuesday, again, and we must have had a leap year, because it was only six years ago, not seven, that the September 11 attacks hit this country on a Tuesday, in Virginia, at the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania at Shanksville, and in New York City at the Twin Towers. I was home that morning, home to work on a school project. I remember hearing the news on the radio and then running to turn on the TV. East End Sally was downstairs, asleep, and so I crept into the second floor apartment and woke her. All day, we sat in front of the TV. I walked down the block in the afternoon to buy an "extra edition," the first I'd ever purchased--an afternoon edition that highlighted the attacks. School was cancelled because the plane headed for DC (the one that crashed in Shanksville, due to the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers) was thought at one point to be headed for the tall buildings of downtown Pittsburgh or the Cathedral of Learning, the one tall building in Oakland, the center of the University of Pittsburgh, where I was attending Library School.

I remember the silence of the skies--no planes flew--was it that day only? Today I wonder at how many have the 9/11 memory of being stuck in an airport, stranded, because no flights were incoming or outgoing.

For the month of September so far, the Words of Hope Devotionals have been focusing on a particular prayer movement and today is no different, except to remind us that today is a special day to remember--that panic prayers are appropriate in times of panic and that afterwards, we must continue praying faithfully.

I know for some, there is the relief in forgetting, in letting the fervor of that day fade. But I will never forget, and so for me, it is soothing to go over the details, as they become softer memories. Today the memorial service in NYC won't be at Ground Zero but at a nearby park because Ground Zero is a live construction area. Life goes on. It does. But still, I remember.

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One other tidbit (because I'm forever noticing things like this) : Genesis 9:11 is the verse where God says "Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." I found the numeracy of that verse to be a comfort when I copied it out for the Vacation Bible School at the Open Door this summer.

And in the US, 911 is the emergency number for fire/police/ambulance.

Say a prayer, light a candle, hug someone today.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me...

This morning, this Tuesday morning, I go off to Women's Bible Study. And then to work. The beat goes on.

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*I don't have a cohesive way of dealing with this day--it is all wrapped up in memory and patriotism and fragments, here and there.

A link from Gather, an minute and hour chronology of 9/11/01.

2006

2005