Threshold
It's not easy to upload a blog post for September 11 without somehow touching on 9/11, even if the blog post is really about something else entirely. But today being a Friday, I am taking the challenge, and rather than do this in a roundabout way, let me just jump right in and tell you where I was and what I was doing when 9/11 happened.
I was in my parents' house, where I was living at the time, caring for my newborn son. I just turned 25 years old. I was very unhappy, but I didn't know it yet. Those days were spent mostly living from one day to the next, while making sure that the baby is fed and dry and well-rested. Such were my concerns: breathing and eating and sanitation. I was so preoccupied with surviving the tedium that I had no opportunity to even think about transcendence. Little did I know that my marriage was to come crashing down within that year.
But that afternoon, while preparing to sterilize my son's bottles, I heard my mother exclaim in the lanai, and then I saw my father walking over to her and turning up the volume of the television. I went over to the TV and saw that now-familiar footage of the twin towers oozing with black smoke. I no longer remember what the reporters were saying.
That was fifteen years ago. I was a young wife who had no idea that my future would be nothing like I had planned, nothing like I had ever imagined. The world had 9/11 that would bring humanity to the point of no return. I had the day of the 9/11 attack to mark the closing of certain doors to me at a very momentous time in my life.
I will never be innocent again. I will never go through life without another human being depending on me again. I will never be able to believe again that love would be enough. That was the moment of my fall. That was the very first betrayal that life had subjected me to. But fourteen years hence, I have already risen. I have already crossed the threshold, and have closed the final door behind me. My own Ground Zero is now grown over with a forest.
[Image credits: 1, 2]
But that afternoon, while preparing to sterilize my son's bottles, I heard my mother exclaim in the lanai, and then I saw my father walking over to her and turning up the volume of the television. I went over to the TV and saw that now-familiar footage of the twin towers oozing with black smoke. I no longer remember what the reporters were saying.
That was fifteen years ago. I was a young wife who had no idea that my future would be nothing like I had planned, nothing like I had ever imagined. The world had 9/11 that would bring humanity to the point of no return. I had the day of the 9/11 attack to mark the closing of certain doors to me at a very momentous time in my life.
I will never be innocent again. I will never go through life without another human being depending on me again. I will never be able to believe again that love would be enough. That was the moment of my fall. That was the very first betrayal that life had subjected me to. But fourteen years hence, I have already risen. I have already crossed the threshold, and have closed the final door behind me. My own Ground Zero is now grown over with a forest.
[Image credits: 1, 2]
posted by Maryanne Moll | 12:01 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home