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| Polly Anna Herself, on location in NYC, 1997. |
I was supposed to be there at 9am so I was close by in the car, listening to NPR, when the first plane hit. I sat in the car in the parking lot until the absolute last minute that I had to go in, and then went straight to the unit to do the morning programing with the patient.
I recount this story every year because I wish I could have had the lack of awareness of what was going on that my patient had. The first thing I was asked upon arriving on the unit was why the staff was playing the same part of a movie over and over on the telly. I remember that same sense of optimism, in my case because I am the eternal Polly Anna (or used to be, pre-Eugene), and remember thinking that it had to be an accident. A terrible, large scale accident, but an accident just the same.
The staff sat the patient down and told them what was going on, in excruciating detail, because they were chronologically a teenager with the processing level of a smaller child. The staff were very kind and careful during that interaction, which ended with some typical questions: Is my mom all right? Are they going to fly planes into my mom's house? Heartbreaking but important.
When people talk about the lack of innocence that followed 9/11, that's what I think of. So many of us were caught off guard in the worst way possible that day. I think that is an important lesson to remember now, while we are caught in the grips of leadership that want to take us back to the pre 9/11 USA, when we believed that we were safe because our leaders told us so...when we believed the hype about being the greatest country in the world. Remember the shock that you felt, even if you didn't have anyone directly in harm's way that morning*. Remember it and use the clear vision we all had afterward to critically listen to all the noise coming from politicians and heads of state.
Do not ever let yourself be so complacent that you accept something without questioning again...or we will be right back where we were, 25 years ago. Don't misunderstand...the togetherness and the increased community that we saw in the immediate days afterward was a good thing, and if we could all reach out to each other that way again, regardless of the contrived ideas that we think divide us, our country would be stronger and, I think, safer.
Hug those you love today, y'all. If there was any lesson to be learned from 9/11/2001, it is that we aren't promised tomorrow and we need to act accordingly, to all, but especially to the least of these.
*I may have known someone that was there that day. When I worked at UGA I met a Scottish guy in the welcome to your new job orientation nonsense named Marcus. I cannot remember his last name to save my life, but he was once working as a bartender in London and told me all the patrons called him Angus because of his accent. I know that he was living in New York in 2001 and I THINK he was working in the Wall Street area. I think of him every year, showing up to one of the orientation events in a kilt that looked suspiciously like a Campbell tartan to me, and talking about the fact that my family are McDonalds.
