3 Things - Cool, 9/11, Bulbs

The photo is from Hiroshima. It's the shadow of what was there before the bomb. 

9/11/2022

Yesterday it was hot and muggy and sticky. Almost every day since May has been hot and muggy and sticky. We have a small house with air conditioning; utility bills are not prohibitive so I am a lucky that way.  It’s usually cool enough in here.

But spending time outside, as one ought to do, is perpetually hot and muggy and sticky. I’m weary of sweating. Most weeks my laundry has included nearly twenty spent t-shirts … just from me.

Today, suddenly, the world is 50 degrees and raining. I’m wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and I feel like a pilgrim returning to her native land.

…

Its 9/11; 21 years since that day.  Do you know exactly where you were when you first heard that terrible news?  Of course, you do. That moment is etched in us like shadows at Hiroshima. 

All of us have these memories. Moments where what was happening in the world etched itself into us.

Sputnik was tiny light arcing across the night sky. I was scared to suddenly be lifted from my bed into my dad’s arms, he carried me through the house and outside into the cool night air. I watched his finger pointing Sputnik out to me. I was not yet 5-years-old.

Our teacher went to the door, talked quietly a moment, turned back to us. “President Kennedy has been shot.” She turned on a radio that we’d never before listened to during class. Walter Cronkite announced that the president was dead. I heard sniffly crying and turned to see behind me. Tough kid Dougie had tucked his head under the flip top of his desk; he was sobbing as quietly as he could.

Sitting on the floor in our living room, watching the Bob Hope Christmas Special from Vietnam, with my mom. A banner in the crowd of soldiers read “101st Airborne Medics at Hue. “  Now mom and I knew where my brother was.

When the Challenger and the Columbia exploded. When Elvis died. When Mayor Daley died - I was a bank teller across the street from his doctor’s office when the street suddenly filled with cops and reporters. When Nixon resigned. Kent State. The Berlin Wall fell. Princess Diana’s car crash. Columbine.

None of us remember all those moments but all of us remember some of them and when we do, it’s not the journalists’ reports in front of us, it’s our memories. Where we were. Who we were with. What our friends did, our kids said, the temperature of the air, what we were wearing, and the way our heart thumped.

Sometimes we get so used to considering stories as they are given to us by others that we forget all these things happened to us. This is our life. These are moments and places where "out there" impacted "in here". 

We see what a narrow beam we walk and how high off the ground we are.

…

Yesterday our Madison grandkids were her for the afternoons. First of all, not to brag or anything, but go ahead, top this. I have TWO grandkids who like broccoli. 

I bought about 50 bulbs last week so that if they were interested, the kids could help me plant them. Hoo-boy, you want to know a person’s incipient style? Give them a small shovel, a patch of rock-hard dirt, and a bag of bulbs.

Mr. Six dug like a dog who had suddenly grown thumbs and was REVELING in flying dirt. I emptied my sock cuffs later. If there is a way to spend twice as much energy as is needed, he will find it.

Ms. Four helped her mom plant some grape hyacinths. “Mom, we are doing a Gardening Activity!”

Of my fifty bulbs, the kids helped me plant … six. It was a pretty good adventure. Next Spring when the alliums come up, I’m going to see flying dirt.