Four years later...

Hey Jakey,

Today we grown-ups commemmorate the fifth-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and also attacks on the Pentagon and a failed attack in Pennsylvania. Thousands of people died. There's not a whole lot that I can say that hasn't been said before, a hundred times better, by hundreds upon thousands of people. It was a sad day that changed the world forever, and shaped a future for you that is vastly different than one where this event has not happened.

All I can do today is offer you this... it's a column I wrote for the paper on the one-year anniversary of what is now collectively known as "9-11."

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Countdown to a bittersweet 9-11
published Sept. 11, 2002

This week, we observe the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and nearly everyone in our nation and beyond is looking back on the day with renewed emotions kindled by the significance of a single year’s passage. I have reason, though, to look back on that day with more than a shred of happiness that mingles uncomfortably with my grief and anger over that day’s events. September 11, 2001, was the day the love of my life, my boyfriend Rob, came safely home to me.

The media this week are making much of timelines, a retelling of seemingly unrelated events that, assembled cohesively and viewed from a distance, string together a horrifying narrative of terrorism. Here, then, is my personal timeline of events leading to my bittersweet 9-11.

Sunday, September 2: My parents arrive in Nevada, having driven all the way from Texas. I haven’t seen them in several years, and Rob is meeting them for the first time. This is the day that American Airlines sends out an internal memo warning its employees to be on the lookout for impostors after one of its crews had uniforms and ID badges stolen in Rome.

Monday, September 3 (Labor Day): Rob and I take my parents to the Ponderosa Ranch for a haywagon breakfast and sightseeing. Rob lies down on a bench and complains of chest pains. I remark bitterly that he is being a drama queen, and suggest he snap out of it. We go home and Rob sleeps for 12 hours. On this day, the FAA claims to possess “intelligence of something about to happen.”

Tuesday, September 4: Rob’s pains return and I take him to his doctor in South Lake. He’s immediately admitted to a hospital room: Rob has suffered a heart attack. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Bush’s Cabinet-rank advisers hold a meeting on terrorism.

Wednesday, September 5: Led to believe that Rob just needs a few tests and some rest, I attempt to entertain my parents with a quick jaunt to Virginia City. We return to South Lake later that afternoon, only to find that Rob has been airlifted to Washoe Medical Center in Reno.

September 6, 7 and 8: Rob is told that he has 95 percent blockage of several of the larger arteries around his heart, and will need an angioplasty and stents installed to open up some of the more serious blockages. We meet his heart surgeon, a stunning six-foot-plus transvestite with four-inch heels and Jackie O. pearls. Rob’s parents drive in from the Bay Area, and my parents and Rob’s meet for the first time in the hallway of the cardiology intensive care unit. The State Department issues a warning, alerting against an attack by al-Qaeda. But the warning focuses on a threat to American citizens overseas.

Sunday, September 9: Having spent several days and nights now in the hospital in Reno, this is the day I finally hit upon a palatable meal combo in the hospital cafeteria: a grilled cheese sandwich with the potato broccoli soup. Prostitutes, it’s later reported, appear to have slept with some of the hijackers in Boston hotel rooms on this day.

Monday, September 10: Rob undergoes surgery to repair the blockages around his heart. We’re shown pictures of the stent installed in one of his arteries. It’s about the size of the spring in a ball-point pen. I catch a glimpse of his surgeon, exquisitely dressed this day in a lime-green mini-dress, with a decidedly Patty Duke-like flip to her hair. Elsewhere in the world, at least two messages in Arabic are intercepted by the Nat’l Security Agency. One states “The match is about to begin” and the other states “Tomorrow is zero hour.”

Tuesday, September 11: My father wakes me up to tell me that I need to watch what’s happening on the television. I figure it must be major, because he’s smoking a cigarette, something we had agreed he wouldn’t do in the house. I watch in horror as events unfold. My neighbor comes over and advises us to fill up all of our vehicles’ gas tanks. He’s convinced me that this is World War III, and I take my paranoia a step further by withdrawing a huge wad of cash from an ATM on my third trip back from the gas station, having filled all the family’s tanks now, mentally prepared for martial law and rationing.

I get home and the phone rings. It’s Rob. “Come and get me,” he says, “The doctor says I can come home now.” His tired, small voice centers me, and I jump in my truck to make one last trek to Reno to bring him home.

In the days and weeks following that horrific day, Rob and the nation both made stunning recoveries.

September 11 will forever be a day that stirs up a potent mix of emotions for me. As you read this on Wednesday, September 11, 2002, Rob and I are out camping in the sublime Sierra backcountry, reveling in another year on this earth, realizing now, as we all do, how really precious another year can be.