for today

The anniversary for 9-11 came and went in my corner of the world with little fanfare or notice. Standing in the cool grey stoned foyer of 4th Presbyterian Saturday morning, preparing to smile at visitors and offer them cookies and coffee and invite them to tour the sanctuary (we have a beautiful church on Michigan Avenue), I was briefly reminded of the day when Calum said that some people might want to meditate. I asked why and he said, “It’s the anniversary.”

Later that afternoon, I rode the bus to Wicker Park and Bucktown to see the art fair, Around the Coyote, and A— and I rode trolleys, collected postcards, ate lunch, signed guestbooks, stood in hot tiny studios and sat by Wicker Park fountain, watching a beautiful afternoon fade into dusk.

The towers were the farthest thing from my mind.

Instead, other thoughts occupied me. I still thought about last weekend with DD – and the uncomfortable possibility that he could read this. My father had returned from his cruise and I wanted to catch up with him. My checking account had only $20 in it. My dental bill still had to be paid. I needed shoes. The invitation list for the Election Party had to be written.

Besides, there are other anniversaries that year other than 9/11. 10/25 – the day I was laid off from Deloitte (or fired, whatever.) 7/8 - the day my mother died, a loss that hangs on me. Her death is my ground zero; hers is the great black gaping hole that can never be filled. Of the thousands who died that year, I really only mourn one.

I’ve seen my mother’s grave only once on the day we buried her. I don’t visit it when I’m in LA. My sister doesn’t take her kids to touch the cold marble and fill the vase. The absence is enough for me. I don’t care if that seems uncaring or unfeeling; my family has never been sentimental. (This is what happens when your father grows up in the projects and your mother came from a poor Philippine village. Sentimentality is a middle class luxury you can't afford to cultivate.)

And so I carry the same unsentimentality to our national period of mourning. Not that I’m unaffected by that day. In the opening minutes of Michael Moore’s film, over a black screen, I heard the sounds of that day – the sirens, the rumbling, the disbelief, the cries. I shook. My skin prickled and my throat closed. I cried again. But despite my obvious physical reaction to that day I will not visit ground zero. I will not touch the wall and cry. I will not attend another prayer service. I will not listen to another speech that invokes it.

Perhaps my clear contempt and anger toward the Bush administration bolsters my refusal to memorialize this date. Perhaps I’m just too tired of the manipulative nature of these anniversaries. Perhaps I just don’t care anymore. Or maybe I can’t deal anymore. I’m overloaded. I’m saturated in mourning: Mom, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu-Ghraib, Darfur, Madrid, Beslan.

I could wallow in the Sunday afternoon my mother died. I could indulge in the sweet comfort of breaking down, the numbness, the hysteria. Writing this now, some of that has creeped back. But I choose not to – it's the most important event in my life and I push it away. The absence is enough. The lack is enough.

Because to take it all in again – to revel and wallow in the sounds, the tastes, the insane everythingness of it all –would be too much.