A Crystal Blue Sky

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sky as blue as I did the morning of September 11, 2001. It had been a year since I strangely decided to move back to Boston after spending ten years in San Francisco and I was quickly becoming the lay off queen of the world. With my job terminated in California, I came back to the place I’d left when I was 24 years old. After countless interviews, I landed a horrible job at Akamai software where two very large fat girls made my life miserable. Searching for a new job to be my savoir, I thought I found it at an advertising firm, only to fall quickly back in the unemployment line. And then, that crystal clear day, I was temping for a telecommunications company in a windowless basement, shut off from the world save the time snuck on the Internet. I can still recall looking up at that gorgeous blue, cloudless sky as I walked into the office that day - thinking how beautiful it all looked so early in the morning.

Someone said one of the towers was on fire and everyone still went about their mindless routine, whipped back to the task at hand by some nameless worker bee exerting his perceived power over the temps. And when I heard that one of the towers had collapsed, I thought it must be an Internet hoax. How could the tower come down?  And when we were finally released from our working jail cell – the mass pike was eerily vacant of cars. I made it back to my condo in what seemed less than 20 minutes. Was I speeding or just going the normal limit?

I sat in front of the television, holding the phone and listening to my mother crying as we watched the images of that day over and over. It was impossible to not imagine what the passengers on those planes felt. I learned that one of the founders of the Cambridge technology firm I briefly worked at was on board one of the planes and that American Airlines flight 11 was a flight I had once taken to go back to California for a visit. In the days that followed, I had an interview at Fenway Community Health and worked there until they, too, laid me off, which finally was the hint I needed that I was meant to live nowhere else but California.

Has the patriotism that filled the country slipped away from us since that terrible day? Where are all the flags I saw outside every neighbor’s house? Why has the bickering and finger pointing in Washington reached new heights? I must shamefully admit, that often times, I have forgotten as well, but in my defense, perhaps it’s simply because, as much as it seems unfair, life moves on and we need anniversaries to remind us of what’s important. Whether it’s a wedding anniversary that forces a married couple to look back at what first made them fall in love or a move date that causes a young man to remember why he left the city he grew up in – everyone needs to look back and remember. Everything we touch and witness touches our lives, forms our beings and ultimately shapes us.

I can remember that summer, before the world turned upside down, my once and forever almost boyfriend and his partner had come to visit me. We spent a week in Provincetown – drunk on good times and great friendship. There wasn’t a care in the world except how to avoid the hangover, which went away by eating the horrible yet strangely appetizing Spiritus pizza at 1 a.m. The world was now simply defined as before and after the terrorist attacks.

It’s impossible to ask, “what if?” Living is full of the outcome of choices and actions by you and others in your past. Remembering makes you stronger. Despite the tears that stream down your face and the tug on your heart that makes you gasp for air, you must continue to live, you must never give up on the hope for the future. Remember that your actions do affect others, and despite the uncertainty of what lies ahead  – never forget to stop and look at a crystal blue sky and remember how beautiful it all looks.