“Sad Story”

Last week at dinner when it was daughter Eva’s turn to share highlights and lowlights of her day,  she was nearing the finish line and then suddenly stops and goes, “OH I FORGOT. There’s a really sad story.”

“What is it?” I said, in a wide-eyed over-exaggerated childlike way, to mirror her dramatic setup.

Then she unloaded with this crazy story she learned from her kindergarten teacher at school.

“One day, there was a bad guy. And he took a plane, and he CRASHED it into a building. And it died so many people. And even people on the ground were died too, because of the building crashing. It’s really, really sad.” [Eva makes face pouty here.]

Upon realizing what she was telling us, Matt and I looked at each other and he responded by saying something like, “Yes that was really really sad. And those people shouldn’t have died.” (I’m not sure Eva realized this was an actual event that happened until that point, in which her dad brought his personal memory of 9/11 into the conversation and made that connection for her, whether we should have or not.)

Then I go, “The guy who crashed the plane into the building died, too.”

And immediately Eva comes back with, “But he WANTED to die. He flew that plane knowing he was going to die.”

A week later I am still stunned to hear the 9/11 story recounted to me by my five-year-old as a distant story, and not something real that she experienced in her lifetime. And also stunned that she processed all of this and they talked about it at school but I guess you’re not supposed to shelter small people from news … but still, yikes. I keepl turning over this whole scene in my head, and the adorable way she said, “And it died so many people.” Because I don’t even know if she has ever used the verb “kill” before. Sigh.

After the Flood

I lived in Houston the fall of 2001, after Tropical Storm Allison led to destructive flooding that was, at the time, historic. Allison now seems quaint compared to what we’re witnessing happen under Harvey.

What I remember about that time was the Allison recovery consumed so much of the energy in the area. But then, two more breathtaking news events happened: September 11, and not long after, the fall of Enron, which was to Houston what GM is to Detroit. So even though this makes no logical sense, I’m filled with a sense of foreboding about what’s next.

September 11

On 9/11/2001 I was living in Houston, on a semester off from Mizzou, and training for the Houston marathon, which is held every January. So that morning I headed to lush Memorial Park to do a workout with my training buddies at five in the morning, since that’s how early you have to run in Houston because otherwise you might die of heatstroke.

We were finished with our speed drills that morning by before seven. So from there I drove to the 24 Fitness gym on San Felipe and Ross where I would often go stretch, cool down or lift weights. I picked a recumbent bike in the first of two rows in front of TV screens, right next to Dr. Alan Katz, who was also my OB/GYN after meeting at the gym and shooting the shit every once in awhile. (I figure, hey we always chat on the bikes, you might as well make sure my girl parts are healthy.)

Sometime during this chatty bike ride we saw on the screens the plane hit the first tower. It was completely unclear at that time what was going on, we suspected they were filming a movie. It wasn’t until I got home and took a shower and saw the second plane hit that I realized we were under some sort of terrorist attack. It was terrifying, considering we’d really spent the rest of the summer concerned about a spate of shark attacks near American beaches.

I called my mom, who was at work at the Taiwanese consulate, who said I should probably just stay home from college classes that day. I did, and when she got home from work we went shopping, because she was like, “We should spend all our money in case we’re not around much longer.” When we got back into the car after walking around the mall like zombies, while we were sitting in the parking lot, the radio was playing the U.S. Congress singing “God Bless America” together on the steps of the Capitol. We sat there and cried.