After September 11

Ten years ago, I sat by myself on a fourth-hand futon and watched the television. It was a bit strange – to watch history unravel by myself – and also strange because I had recently moved into the Blob. It was an “intentional Christian community” in Centretown, Ottawa. (We tried to avoid the word commune hence the adjectives and quotations marks.) There were usually others around the place, but that morning I had the Blob to myself. It was a sunny apartment, taking up the top two floors on an old hotel, and overlooking a busy and interesting intersection. I’d started breakfast, planning to head outside soon and do some job hunting, but the CBC slowed me down. The radio was on in the kitchen, and, as I ate my granola, I listened to the hosts make their first tentative descriptions of what would be an impossible day.

By the time I turned on the TV, my mother was on the phone. She wanted me out of downtown.

“This is Ottawa, Mum. I’m fine.”

But she didn’t listen. I was downtown in a capital city, only ten  minutes walk from Parliament Hill, and who knew how much of the sky was crumbling. She said she was going to pack my visiting grandmother into the car and come in from the suburbs to collect me. The rest of my siblings were safely ensconced in small and obscure Ontario towns, well away from office towers. Kidnapping me from Centretown was her one possible maternal act of world-saving that morning.

And I appreciated it. I was worried. Not about Ottawa. But I knew people in New York – a former housemate of mine, the sister of a friend, a one-time owner of the Blob’s futon. This wasn’t an anonymous catastrophe. Everyone knew someone in New York.

By lunchtime, I was sitting with my Mum and my Gran in the Arrow and Loon down Bank Street. Heading back out to the suburbs felt extreme, but at least Parliament was a little further way. There was, of course, a television on in the pub. My Gran was getting agitated about the analytical coverage. I can see her point.  In the thick of World War II, when she was doing her feisty best to raise a family on her own while her soldier husband was away, the country was plastered with government issued signs highlighting the risks of indiscretion. Now, there were governmental figures on the television speaking all-too openly about military assets and tactics. Times change.

Now, ten years on, my Gran has passed away, and I have a five year old daughter. She hasn’t asked any questions about 9/11. It isn’t something on her radar. This feels a little strange – that history has happened so recently, and she doesn’t know it. But I’m glad she doesn’t yet. Five feels so little. And I’m sure when the questions do come, I’ll be saying ten feels so little. Fifteen feels little.

But history does break it. When we arrived in Edinburgh last week, Beangirl was quick to notice the shop next door to our house, its windows boarded up for renovation.

“Oh no! Not in Edinburgh, too.”

We assured her that this wasn’t because of riots. She wasn’t sure. She’d seen windows like this before. They meant that there were more police on the streets and the shops all close early. It meant adults were scared.

But now, a few days on, she and Blue have shifted their interest to the graffiti rather than the boards – they are particularly fond of two grinning skeletons. They call them dubbed Robbie and Crusoe.

We all have ways of dealing with history.