![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
today's date
Sep. 11th, 2007 12:25 pmEvery time I'm at our family's summer cottage, floating in the lake on a beautiful clear sunny day, I'm reminded of another day when I did that. I had been at the cottage with my mom for the weekend, and the weather was so nice I decided on the spur of the moment to stay an extra day. This was before I had kids, so a spontaneous decision like that was as simple as a phone call to the office saying I was taking the day off.
So I made that call, and I went for a leisurely float on the water. It was a glorious day, sunny and in the 70s F. The sky was impossibly blue, the trees impossibly green, with maybe one or two smallish impossibly-white clouds adding texture to the vista. I floated there looking up at that sky and thinking how ideal this was, how serene, how sublime. It was the perfect way to get myself thoroughly relaxed before I had to get back to work the next day.
That was Monday, September 10th, 2001.
How clearly I remember what came next -- I'm sure we all do -- and I remember thinking repeatedly on that awful day, "I should have stayed in the lake." Not that another day of floating in blissful ignorance would have made one iota of difference in what happened that day, or the consequences we're still experiencing. But it was hard enough to leave that at all, and worse to have 9/11 to come back to.
Now I think about that every time I'm at the cottage on a day of similar weather. It comes back to haunt me, and of course I resent it. I'm not even in a position to be as traumatized by the day, and the anniversary, as many people I know who are reading this. I won't say that my floating-in-the-lake associations are anywhere near as bad as the memories that some of you have to live with; that would be ridiculous. I'm just saying...we all remember in our own ways, I guess. To me, my idyllic memories of September 10th sort of epitomize, or symbolize, the state we were in collectively as a society pre-9/11, and the stark contrast with the state we're in today. And how apt that metaphor is today in particular, when it's rainy and cold and gloomy outside!
Anyway...hugs to all who are having difficulty with today's date:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anime_heart, mofic, and any others out there. I wish healing for you personally, and for us as a society.
So I made that call, and I went for a leisurely float on the water. It was a glorious day, sunny and in the 70s F. The sky was impossibly blue, the trees impossibly green, with maybe one or two smallish impossibly-white clouds adding texture to the vista. I floated there looking up at that sky and thinking how ideal this was, how serene, how sublime. It was the perfect way to get myself thoroughly relaxed before I had to get back to work the next day.
That was Monday, September 10th, 2001.
How clearly I remember what came next -- I'm sure we all do -- and I remember thinking repeatedly on that awful day, "I should have stayed in the lake." Not that another day of floating in blissful ignorance would have made one iota of difference in what happened that day, or the consequences we're still experiencing. But it was hard enough to leave that at all, and worse to have 9/11 to come back to.
Now I think about that every time I'm at the cottage on a day of similar weather. It comes back to haunt me, and of course I resent it. I'm not even in a position to be as traumatized by the day, and the anniversary, as many people I know who are reading this. I won't say that my floating-in-the-lake associations are anywhere near as bad as the memories that some of you have to live with; that would be ridiculous. I'm just saying...we all remember in our own ways, I guess. To me, my idyllic memories of September 10th sort of epitomize, or symbolize, the state we were in collectively as a society pre-9/11, and the stark contrast with the state we're in today. And how apt that metaphor is today in particular, when it's rainy and cold and gloomy outside!
Anyway...hugs to all who are having difficulty with today's date:
anime_heart, mofic, and any others out there. I wish healing for you personally, and for us as a society.
