Requiem for a clear morning.


I remember.

"Go turn on the tv now."

"It's on already...the kids are watching cartoons. Why?"

"Go turn on an American channel. Two passenger planes just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City"

Two planes. Two planes. He said two planes. I am standing in my mother's kitchen by the front door looking through the room divider at the children watching television. I am in Newfoundland. Patrick is in his office in Little Rock, having gone home ahead of us. It is a little more than a week since I poured the ashes of my father's body over the side of a boat. He said two planes. Two planes. Two.

One plane would be an accident. A terrible accident. He said two.

Passengers?

I drop the phone. By the time I make it around the corner of the living room, the children's programming has been interupted. There are the towers, and there are parts missing from them. Like an amputee with phantom pain, my mind fixates on the parts that aren't there. I suppose I breathe. I suppose I am aware of the children. Maybe I take steps to shield them from what is unfolding on the the screen. Maybe I even call back my husband. I know I call my mother and tell her, for the second time in my life, to come home, something terrible has happened.

When she comes in, the second tower has just fallen. I am standing in the living room and I can't stop crying. I am crying for the people I have just watched die, turning to dust and ash before my eyes. I am crying for my father, dust and ash falling through my fingers. The "two-planes-two" refrain changes. It's the end of the world, it's the end of the world. I don't think I can breathe ever again.

I remember.

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remembering September 11