A blur

I am so tired tonight I can hardly keep my eyes open. Ol was up at 4am with a nightmare, and I was never able to get back to sleep. I spent the day at school taking photographs of students new and old, some nervous, some utterly at home, some keen on talking, some inward and unsure as we all have been some or many times. Some of these bright faces I've known for up to six years; some of those are like my own nieces and nephews. When I interact with these children, I feel lucky that my own boys get to learn and spend time with them. 

I didn't bother counting how many of the same routes I drove on repeat today. I was just happy I could keep the windows rolled down, a fall breeze gusting through as (mostly) good music played. 

Sometime, ages ago, I made it to yoga. I had to leave early to be at school, but the 65 minutes I spent centered on my mat were tremendous. And I don't mean that in any way but literal. The woman next to me twice dropped bagged crystals from her cleavage -I am not kidding- and finally laid them all on her blanket. Beyond that momentary distraction (and, admittedly, the time I spent periodically throughout today pondering substantially-sized crystals housed in billowy mesh bags of various pastel hues tucked in a lycra yoga tank and yet still tumbling forth), I was so grateful for the quiet time in which I was to focus on me. My breath. My practice. My strength. My connection with all around me. Yoga. From the Sanskrit "yug" meaning to join, unite, yoke.

There's also an element of subjugation in that Sanskrit meaning, but I'm not going there. Except in the ways it makes me consider how often I do subjugate my needs to those of the loved ones I tend and the issues I care about and advocate for. Which are decisions I want to make. But still. It is essential to step back sometimes, and yet, despite decades of practice, I continue to find doing so a challenge.

Tom hugged me last night, and half-jokingly quoted from Good Will Hunting: "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." 

"It is!" I replied. "I never say 'no." 

"No, honey, I know that. I mean, it's not your fault if another volunteer doesn't step up. That doesn't mean you have to fill in."

Food for thought. But I am getting better.

The boys have had a marvelous first week of school. Their school. That dreamy, exceptional place whose cost makes me quiver but which always seems worth it. And god are we forever so damn fortunate to be able to do this. Truly. I think about the rather lousy education I had access to growing up, how flummoxed by everything I was when I got to college, how desperately I had to work to catch up. I learned so much during the catch up, but it was a bear of a challenge, would have been easier to build along the way instead of tacking up a foundation, shell, necessities, and an addition all on short notice. But alas. My lucky boys.

Today during my pictorial tour of the student body I happened across Ol's class. He didn't see me at first but I saw him. Racing across the playground, sweaty and mussed, eyes flashing with joy, voice without a care in the world calling out to old friends and brand new ones. He spotted me and ran over, draping himself atop and across me. "Oh, mama, I love to see you at school. I love you! Can I help you?"

Did I ever feel that gleeful and free in third grade? In second? In fourth? I am nearly certain I didn't. What about the glee I felt today in Ol's embrace? And in Jack's when I picked him up? Hard to articulate that, really.

And yet in this soft, fuzzy skein of love also threads a few strands of overwhelm, a chokehold that I thought would have loosened by now. No one tells you motherhood doesn't get easier. I mean, it does in some ways, but in others, no dice. 

We desperately needed to go to the grocery store this afternoon, after I'd left the lower school, raced to the middle school to get Jack, raced back to the lower school to get Ol. I had been gone from home since 8:30am and was sweaty and beat. And the thought of taking both kids with me to the market just before the 5pm crowd descended was not something that made me enthused. It made me feel yoked and overwhelmed and pissy about being out of milk. 

The kids were not badly behaved, but let's just say they weren't calm, either. We left with milk but also three pints of ice cream and the most bizarre assortment of items for "picnic dinner." And my head was spinning. I felt like one of those malfunctioning Fembots in Austin Powers, all blowing gaskets and puffs of smoke and lolling eyes. 

I don't have any words of wisdom to tidy this post up with. I feel rusty and dry here which vexes me to no end. But I made it to yoga, and I saw my boys in their elements today, and I helped out and met some new people and hugged lots of old friends and the greatest teachers who guided my children and are now friends, and I still managed to cook us all dinner and tuck my boys in. And there is a lot of love swirling around. Lots of memory of this day sixteen years ago when I lived in New York and a dark plume of smelly smoke and ash and char and destruction blew up the avenues towards my apartment. 

Out of darkness most always comes light, even when you can't see it for a bit. I see it today but boy am I tired. Hope y'all are well. 

Fifteen years

I lived on 91st St and Lexington Avenue, in a 4th floor walk-up apartment a block from both the renowned 92nd Street Y and the bus I took to Columbia each weekday morning. I liked my route. An M bus snaked north into Spanish Harlem and then west along Central Park's top edge before turning north again and toward my stop at 116th and Amsterdam.

I loved watching the City go by: power commuters pounding the pavement with a bagel in one hand and a phone in the other; nannies strolling children to school or the playground; the bodegas raising their steel bar doors; neighbors greeting each other; vendors selling Greek paper cups of coffee; the regulars hop on and off the bus. 

That Tuesday morning, I felt like a regular myself. I was seated on the left side of the bus, in a single seat if I recall, and it was a beautiful day. Blue skies, leaves starting to change colors, a nascent fall crispness in the air. I got to work just before 9:00 am. Our permanent offices were in Hamilton Hall, but renovations meant we were in a temporary building then, two to an office. I was sharing space with one of my favorite colleagues, Peter.

I don't remember if I'd heard the news before I arrived-cellphones then were flip, data-free ones-but as soon as I walked in, I knew something was wrong. We all gathered around a screen and watched as the second plane slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. I remember gasping, looking around, everyone in disbelief. Classes had just begun, new student energy was still buzzing around campus. It was a perfect New York day. I'd just felt like a regular.

It was all utterly dissonant.

And then the South Tower collapsed. Just 56 minutes after being hit. A 56 minutes that felt at once glacial and like warp speed. I can't adequately describe what it was like to watch that mighty structure crumble in on itself. To watch people jumping from windows, to watch the smoke and fire juxtaposed against the blue sky. To watch replay of those planes flying so purposefully and directly into a monument to a vibrant, wholly unique city. 

The North Tower collapsed just 29 minutes later. Meanwhile, the Pentagon was hit. And some spectacularly brave passengers forced a fourth plane to crash land in Pennsylvania instead of into another DC target. 

And still we gasped, mouths agape, shellshocked expressions on our faces. Few people could get a phone line; those who did started phone trees, and family and friends called other family and friends and even strangers to let those loved ones know each of us was alright. If memory serves, my mother was one of those called.

Some parts of my memory of that day are so clear but others are as hazy. I don't remember anything of the sounds, but I do remember the smells. 

My friend, Jessica, and I walked home together that evening. Public transportation was at a standstill, and as we picked our way south and through Central Park and back to the East Side, I noticed shellshocked faces everywhere, all of us woozy with stupefaction but kept from going completely numb by the smell. 

If you looked south down any of New York's avenues, those sturdy aortic drags connecting the bottom of Manhattan to the top, you'd see a thick gray shroud butting up against whatever blue was left in the sky. It was a shroud of the thickest, densest weave, and its seismic perfume reached up and up and up more than a hundred blocks right into our nostrils and windows and doors and bedrooms.

The gray shroud reached like hands towards the living, reminding us for days after the Towers fell and thousands died and people were so brave and unified and generous just what had been forced onto the City. 

I remember being in bed that night, safe and wrapped in clean blankets, and thinking "it's in here with me, that smell and all the particulate debris it carried up here in its wake." It was an unbelievably strange sensation.

Perhaps you lived in New York too, or read about everything that day and afterwards. If so, you know what strength and spirit and resilience the City showed in response to the grotesqueness foisted on it. 

I remember making donations at our neighborhood fire station. Remember seeing posters and photographs of missing loved ones. Remember the flags beating proudly in the wind. Remember the smell finally dissipating. 

9/11 didn't terrorize me or even mark me much. But that's because I was a lucky one (and because I'm white), and for that I am ever grateful. I didn't know Tom then but he worked in DC and remembers where he was when he heard that the Pentagon had been hit. You can still see the differential colors in the Pentagon's west side: the gray of the original stone versus the gray of the stones used to repair the gaping wound left by the hijacked airplane. I notice it every time I drive by.