Remembrance

We all know what day this is.  It's a solemn reminder of the lives and freedoms lost in an instant that beautiful September morning.  We all have our "where were you when the towers fell remembrance."  Mine is one I am truly grateful for.  I had just returned from a gig and got a wild hair to visit El Paso for a few weeks until it was time to gig again.  I was awoken the morning of September 11th by my Father, telling me a plane had just hit the world trade center.  It was very early in the morning. El Paso is 2 hours behind New York.  I sat on the edge of my parents bed in fear and horror as the drama played out.  I don't believe I've ever felt so helpless.  Ron was singing in Albuquerque at the time and was safely out of the city.  But I had many close friends that were in and around the WTC when the attack happened.  Of course there was no way to reach anyone as all phone service was jammed for what seemed like 100 years that morning.  My Father went to work and Mom and I sat all day watching the coverage.  The phone rang off the hook as family members and friends were calling to make sure I was ok.  My Grandmother didn't recognize my voice when I answered the phone and was in a panic to know if I lived anywhere near the site.

I was grounded in El Paso for more than a week before the flights were back up and running.  El Paso has a huge army base and is considered a target so as soon as the airport would open it would immediately close.  Mom and I watched 10 thousand hours of coverage and I remember at one point forcing us to leave the house so that we could just get away from it for a while.   Mom drove me to the airport when the flights were finally open.  She had tears in her eyes and told me that I didn't have to go back, ever, if I didn't want too.  She advised me to keep my important papers together and to always have some cash on hand.  It was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do leaving her there at the airport.  My flight to Dallas was quite full but my flight to NYC only had 6 people on it and one of them was an air marshall.  They moved all of us to first class and we rode in silence all the way to the city.  La Guardia was a ghost town.  A long line of idling taxis snaked its way down the terminal.  I walked to the head of the line and was greeted by a man who, before I could utter one word, assured me he wasn't a terrorist.  I got home in 13 minutes.  The smoke and the fire from the towers was billowing across the island and I could smell it all the way up in my neighborhood.  I still can recall that stench.

Ron had made it home the day before and the following morning we headed to Broadway to support the arts.  There were many people in time square but it was eerily quiet, save for the resonant sound of " WANTED OSAMA DEAD or alive" t-shirt salesmen.  We saw a show and headed home to start the journey of healing.  It's been a long road.  One strewn with way to many lives, lost and damaged.

I am a proud American.  I believe in this country.  I support our government and pray for our troops daily.  But as I look at these ten years lost I know that my civil liberties and day to day freedoms have been limited by the act of those few hate filled men.  I've been openly groped by a machine carrying armed guard, October 2001 before any guidelines for such things had been established.  I've been at the mercy of the MTA when threats and fear set in.  I refused to open a fed ex package that I was unaware of during the anthrax scare.  I bought shower curtains and duct tape to ward off the chemical attack that was reported by our New York City governors.  I supported shows when people were scared and bought useless earring when I knew my local businesses were suffering.  I wept at the seemingly thousands of flyers put up by hopeful family members and friends.

In many ways, they won.  We are recorded and prodded and corralled in a way that has given rise to paranoia, hate and baseline fear.  We have pointed fingers and argued and hidden behind the terror that was that day.  We should have grown as a nation from this tragedy.  Great things are forged in the fire of hardship and strife.  I feel we have emerged from that fire singed and jaded without a clear vision of who we are as a nation.  How can we even begin to have a conversation about who should marry whom when we have come through this ordeal?  Who has any right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my body when thousands of people were attacked simply because we enjoy these freedoms.  In this time of political turmoil it seems insensitive and frivolous to discuss such inane issues with any sort of seriousness.  How many soldiers have died protecting us?  I think we could have the common courtesy to dismiss such non issues in favor of seeking a way to make life in this great country better.  We aren't here to suffer through hours of debates and pages of bills that, in the end, achieve nothing.  Most of us just want to be happy and spend time with those we love. We want to worship and dance and grow our families in a society that has it's eye on the prize.  Peace.  I challenge our great nation to simply put down the blind ambition and think for one damn second about the people that sign their checks.  Don't tell me what to eat, who to worship, who to sleep with or what to do with my body.  Protect me, help me provide for myself and my family and let me enjoy the sounds of freedom that sing from a land that is truly evolving into a new way of doing things.

I am raw from this day.  But I am a optimist.  We are the hope and future of this land. It is up to us to let those that would harm us know that this is unacceptable.  Even if those slings and arrows are deemed friendly fire.