This morning was perfect. Reilly was up and out the door in record time. We sang “The ants go marching” all the way to preschool, and once there, she ran gleefully into her classroom, hung up her backpack, and then kissed me goodbye. As I backed out the door, the teachers told me how wonderful my daughter is. I was glad that they thought so too. I was back in the car and on my way to work, the clock reading 7:46. I smiled. I was going to be early.
When the phone rang and I saw it was Shawn, I recounted our seamless morning and spread the good cheer. As I approached the bridge, I told Shawn how beautiful the sky was today, how a cold front had brought in rain and scrubbed the air clean. It was then, at that moment, that I remembered what today is.
The guilt was immediate: How had I forgotten? At the same time, I felt some relief; the forgetting was progress for me.
In the past, I have anticipated this day for weeks, the storm in my head growing worse by the day. That I had not gone through this tedium was a relief, and also a testament to time, which slowly erases the edges around a memory until even the center begins to fade. At the same time, I feel the need to remember, to pay due respect to the thousands of civilians who lost their lives that day, and the thousands of soldiers who have lost their lives since.
This feeling of being caught in-between the need to forget and the need to remember lends a sort of miasma to my day, but underneath all that foggy mess are two steady feelings: one of anger, and one of sadness.
As I walked across campus this morning, I saw the flag was at half mast, and I thought, I can’t wait for this day to be over. Time, do your work, and quickly.
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