Where I Was

When the events of September 11 occurred, my mom commented that I was talking about it like she and her friends did when John F. Kennedy was killed: what they were doing, where they were, how they heard about it, and how they watched the tape over and over. This is my September 11 story, perhaps not inspirational or notable, but mine.

That day, I was a freshman in college, and it was my second Tuesday of classes. I was reading for my first class in a student center when I caught the morning’s headlines from an overhead television set, and Katie Couric appeared suddenly to announce that the first tower had been hit by a plane. I couldn’t stay for the rest of the report, but soon after I arrived at class, another girl came in with the news that the second tower had been hit, but we had no idea what was going on other than that. My next course was interrupted by a female professor running in and frantically scrawling on the blackboard, “Class cancelled due to emergency in Washington, D.C.” and then racing out without a word. We looked at our elderly professor, who said calmly, “We will finish our class.” And we did.

When I returned to my dorm, my roommate and neighbors were gathered around our tiny television, watching footage replay. For the first time, I saw the planes hitting the towers, the devastating collapse, and the countless people on the ground. Then there came word of the plane crashes in Pennsylvania and D.C. I was shaken. All of the news I had missed during my three hours of classes came crashing to me in waves of deeply saddening images. The skyline of the city where I had spent every holiday since I could remember was billowing smoke where there should have been two solid, steel buildings. I couldn’t call my parents; the phone lines were so blocked up with however many calls. So we sat by the phone and watched the news for hours.

That night, I went to a vigil with several thousands of students, and the show of unity and candlelight was calming to me. I felt distinctly small and vulnerable because the collapse of the towers meant more than the failure of steel and concrete; it was the uncertainty of institutions I had assumed to be stable, even indestructible. The sheer animosity of the act was chilling, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that people on these planes faced their mortality in their coach seats while employees in their offices had no time to say goodbye. I found out later that two daughters of my parents’ friends had died that day at their jobs in the towers. They were my sister’s age.

My parents visited the following weekend because it was intended to be Freshman Parents’ Weekend. They expected to watch me in the halftime show at the football game, but it was cancelled as a sign of respect. Instead, we walked through a memorial ribbon garden set up in front of the library. Thousands of yellow ribbons, bearing messages from students, faculty, and even my parents, fluttered in the wind. Even now, the library looks somewhat empty to me without the ribbons, which have since been taken down and saved for posterity.

Five years later, I made my commute under an appropriately cloudy sky, as if everything was grieving. I will call a friend to wish her a happy birthday; she hates to bring it up in the midst of everything else going on, and people tend to forget. I’ll make dinner for JG and me. I'll watch the ceremonies and speeches. And I’ll remember where I was.

Happy Fall Weekend

I used to love the first day of school. It was the signal to start over, stock up on new supplies, and buy one or two new outfits. Most importantly, it was the start of fall – the best season! In my New England childhood, that meant jumping in piles of rust-toned leaves (and watching out for the occasional slug), eating Crockpot meals like beef stew and pot roast, and the annual farewell to my pollen-induced allergies. Hooray!

Well, my mid-Atlantic leaves are still green, and my allergies haven't quite gone away yet, but this weekend, despite the 70-degree weather and the sound of lawnmowers in the background, is when fall starts for me, and here’s why:

Today: The first University of Delaware football game
Thanks to the generosity of JG’s parents, we have season tickets to go see the University of Delaware football team, and today is the season opener against West Chester University. The game will probably be a blowout because WCU isn’t even in the same division as we are, but it’s a traditional rivalry, and it’s nice to start out the season with a win. I didn’t enjoy football at all before I met JG; as far as I was concerned, the football field was primarily for marching band practice, as I’ve implied before. When I had to give up the band in college due to schedule conflicts, JG and I took advantage of the free student section of the football games – awful seats behind the goal post – and he taught me how to watch the game. At first, I just watched the scoreboard and listened to the announcer, and honestly, from that viewpoint, you can’t tell whether the guys go 5 yards or 50. Soon, though, I began to notice that the same guy usually ran or threw, and I kept hearing the same names over the loudspeaker for completed passes or blitzes. In the weeks before UD won the Division 1-AA National Championship in 2003, JG and I were at every playoff game, even when we had to chip snow and ice off our bleacher seats, and I was as good a football fan as any. Tonight, I’m looking forward to seats on the home side (such luxury!), and I’ll be able to see my friends in the band as well as tell how far plays run. Plus, we’re bringing a sort of tailgate dinner, and there’s always a chance that we’ll run into the mascot in the parking lot!

Tomorrow: The 21st Annual Mushroom Festival
The farms in our little town in Pennsylvania produce half of the world’s mushrooms (I should note here that I love the little fungi and JG has grown to tolerate them), and there is a festival each year to celebrate our major export. It’s always the weekend after Labor Day, and it is a quintessential small town activity, except that it’s infused with mushrooms. There’s an antique car parade, a rock climbing wall for kids, animals up for adoption from the SPCA, and stalls upon stalls of free giveaways and samples from local businesses. The town closes off its main street around the square, and signs in the periphery read, “Mushroom Festival 9/9-9/10. Suggest another route.” Last year at this time, the offer that JG and I made on our house had just been accepted, so we decided to go to the festival to get a taste of what our new town would be like. We paid five bucks for parking and ambled around, checking out the old cars, watching street performers, and buying a snack of the best fried mushrooms caps we’ve ever had. We stumbled upon a used bookstore that was having its grand opening that day, and we came away with handfuls of dollar novels and random other reading material. The Mushroom Festival is special to JG and me, and I can’t wait to walk up and catch the cooking demonstrations from area chefs tomorrow afternoon. This time, I’ll bring my camera and hopefully get shots of all of the random mushroom-shaped paraphernalia that showed up last year, everything from lawn sculptures to bird houses to candle holders. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for those fried mushrooms, too.

Standing Still

Friends of ours just got engaged this week, and that was nice news to receive. JG was pretty instrumental in helping the groom-to-be with the diamond selection, and I think we’ll have a wedding to attend next spring or summer. I picked up an engagement card along with my usual gift of thank you cards, and I’m happy for them.

Can’t you tell?

No, I really am happy for them, but I feel almost envious of all of the excitement and what they have to look ahead of them. It’s not that I don’t love being married, but it was so fun to be newly-engaged. I really enjoyed going to the parties, seeing older women at the supermarket smiling when they saw my ring, browsing wedding magazines, and creating my amazing Wedding Workbook – a collection of interconnected spreadsheets that tracked addresses, gifts, thank yous, RSVPs, expenses, and schedules. But I digress.

Now that I think about it, as momentous as it was, getting engaged was the first of many life changes that occurred over that year. Let’s see… I also graduated from college, found an apartment, landed a job (whew!), got married, bought a house, and moved in. I always had something to anticipate, something to push me forward. When I finished school, I was planning the wedding; when the wedding was over, we started house-hunting. Now that we’re sort of finished, I don’t know how to handle it. When people ask me what’s new, I’m at a loss for words. I’m at the same job, the house is still standing, and I don’t foresee any drastic changes in the near future. I feel motionless when I’m used to accelerating. Is this what they call a rut?

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe I’m easing into a time of life where things are stable so that I can do… well, I don’t know what. That’s another part of this restless discontent. What am I doing with myself? I feel oddly guilty that I’m not striving for something, like I got married and checked my ambition at the door.

I’m sure I’ll look back on this period, thinking wistfully about how much leisure time I had, and scoff that I was too young to appreciate it. The trick is to savor the stillness and lack of urgency now, I suppose. And perhaps this is a time to count my many blessings, count them one by one.

Experiment

Yesterday, I embarked on a household experiment for the greater good, by which I mean the greater good of my jewelry. See, our bedroom is a humid swamp during the summer months despite the thrumming of the dehumidifier, and since this was our first summer in the house, I didn’t anticipate the toll that would take on my not very large selection of sterling silver jewelry. Let’s just say that it wasn’t pretty.

Initially, I tried what JG’s mom called a foolproof method. She told me to “line the sink with aluminum foil, put in some baking soda, and then pour hot water in.” Uh, that’s it? What quantities of all of these things? How hot is the water? Does it matter that I’m trying to de-tarnish jewelry and not silverware? I surmised from the lack of details that quantities didn’t matter too much, so I started in my own fashion. I lined a cake pan (I was wary of my jewelry in the sink) with foil, shook in some baking soda, and then added hot tap water. I followed the directions, right? Wrong. My jewelry stayed as stubbornly tarnished as before, and I had a feeling that the solution was loosing its efficacy as the water quickly cooled off. Forget this – to the source of all knowledge, the internet!

A quick look on Google and eHow turned up a whole variety of solutions. They all had the water/baking soda/aluminum combination, but all other details were all over the map, like temperature of water (hot from the tap vs. boiling), quantity of baking soda (2 tablespoons on up to “one to two cups”!), time (as little as 5 minutes or as much as a half hour), and after-cleaning treatment. Some tipsters said to wrap the silver in plastic wrap, others recommended mylar bags, and still others preached of moisture-grabbing strips. Again, I mentally protested, “What if it’s jewelry and not forks?!” No one heard my cry.

Finally, after hearing me hem and haw about the variance in these methods – seriously though, why hasn’t anyone debunked the numerous and obviously wrong methods here? – JG put a pot of water on to boil and dumped in a cup of baking soda. Well, that shut me up. I was committed. We were going for the gusto.

The white mixture started to pop and fizz all over the place, and we dumped it into my foil-lined pan. I dropped in my jewelry, trying to maximize my available space, and watched with bated breath. Sure enough, the some of the tarnish started to fall away, and I took the “watched pot” reasoning and stepped away from the somewhat smelly pan.

Fifteen minutes later, I fished out my jewelry from the baking soda cakiness, and well, it kind of worked. Some pieces were totally clean, but others were kind of patchy. The solution wasn’t very comprehensive, to say the least, but I have no idea why. Too much baking soda? Not enough time? Bah. I wiped everything off and put each piece in a plastic snack bag, in spite of the few dire warnings against doing so, and made a mental note to consult my local jeweler. Which could have saved me some time and a whole lot of baking soda.

So much for being all Mr. Wizard.

Delay Itinerary

6:20 – I meet a co-worker in the hotel lobby to grab a cup of tea and a taxi to the airport.

7:00 – We arrive at the airport and get in line to check in, fighting a bit of disorientation because the line is so long that we mistake it for the security line. We confirm with others that we’re in the right place, and check that our separate flights are on time, which they are.

7:30 – We emerge out of the security lines grappling with shoes, computer, jacket, and carry-on with time to chat before our boarding times. I check to make sure I’ve retained my boarding pass, after last time’s misplacement fiasco in the restroom (it was turned in to my gate, thankfully), and I stow it safely in my carry-on.

8:15 – My co-worker and I part ways to head to our respective gates. My flight is now listed with an hour delay, to depart at 9:45am, so I decide to go grab breakfast in the interim. An hour delay doesn’t bother me too much because I’m hopeful that the ride home will be lighter as far as traffic goes. I end up with a disappointingly tasteless orange poppy seed muffin cap, and a guilty-pleasure Entertainment Weekly (Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn were on the cover!). I leave JG a voicemail to let him know about my later arrival back home and then get to work on my muffin and magazine, staring out at the gray landscape of airport, planes, and tarmac.

8:35 – Someone triggers an alarm on an emergency door at the adjacent gate, resulting in a high-pitched, shrill noise in a continuous, piercing tone. Children shriek, older men plug their ears, and an airline representative announces on the loudspeaker that the alarm can only be turned off by the San Francisco police, and they’re on their way. She adds, “Please keep small children away fro the emergency door because … well, please just do that.”

8:50 – The police arrive to shut off the alarm. Harried travelers applaud.

9:15 – I look up from a story on Idlewild and notice on the screen in my gate that the departure time for my flight has magically and silently changed to 10:45. A woman nearby inquires at the desk and brings back news that Tropical Storm Ernesto is imminently pounding the east coast, including Philadelphia, and there’s something going on with air traffic control. We hear an announcement that the air traffic control people have restricted the number of flights that are allowed to land per hour. If the storm lets up, the quantity of flights may increase, but each airport with flights to Philadelphia will now be notified as events warrant. In short, I will be waiting here indefinitely while air traffic control decides whether we can land, with a possibility that the flight could be cancelled.

9:30 – I call my office to form the beginnings of a contingency plan and get assurance that charging a hotel room to my company card in this situation is okay, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. JG calls me and commiserates on my delays, assuring me that he wants me to get home soon, but not at my cost of my sanity. I appreciate.

10:05 – The flight departure time changes to 11:45am, arriving after 8pm. An airline person finally announces a boarding call of 11:15am for this departure time. More applause from Gate 68.

10:07 – A more to-the-point representative announces that because of other weather issues around the country, “anyone traveling to Philadelphia will need to remain on this flight. Do not ask us to reroute you, because we cannot. I repeat, you are stuck on this flight.” Recent applause dies out in favor of indignant murmurs and cynical chuckles.

11:15 – We board the plane as planned, and I find that my whole section of the plane has been taken over by a gaelic football team from San Francisco, and sentences like, “Dude, this sucks, dude” dominate their conversation. I hunker down for the flight and start to doze off before the safety video.