Sunday, September 12, 2021

Before and After: The Birthday Letter

 Dear Daisy, 

Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I remember the moment when the world shifted. I remember exactly what I wore. I remember the fear we felt, even thousands of miles away in northern California. I remember sitting glued to the television with my roommates, watching the endless news cycle. I remember running late in the afternoon, just needing to get out and stretch my legs and the eeriness of the streets: the quiet. No cars on the road. No airplanes flying overhead. No people walking the streets. 

It is strange that we have so many  - the befores and afters in life. Before I knew what a terrorist attack looked like. Before I studied abroad. Before I met your father. Before I became a mother. Before COVID-19. Before you started middle school. 
At 11 years old you are funny and insightful; kind, and wise beyond your years. You have taken an interest in languages, starting an after-school Spanish class, frequently sprinkling your newfound Spanish vocabulary. You started playing volleyball, constantly practicing your bumps and spikes and serves against the front door with a beach ball. You have fallen in love with jazz music, perfecting Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on the piano. You spend hours on the weekends practicing the scales on your flute and fiddling on your sewing machine. You come in sweaty and sticky and happy after time on the tennis court, and you always, always, have a book in your hand. 
This past summer we spent a month driving through the mid-west - exploring the great plains and the heartland of America. We hiked, we camped, we drove (and drove and drove!), we played and we learned. One of our stops was the Oklahoma City National Memorial - a place that honors and remembers the victims, survivors, and rescuers who were affected by the Oklahoma City bombing. The museum took us through the story of April 19, 1995, and then the minutes, days, weeks, and years that followed. 

The museum was fascinating and terrifying and heartbreaking. Afterward, we wandered the Field of Empty Chairs and sat in the middle of the Gates of Time staring at the reflecting pool. These huge twin gates frame the moment of destruction - 9:02 am. The 9:01 Gate representing innocence before the attack. The 9:03 Gate symbolizing the moment healing began. The before and the after. 
You have been learning about the 9/11 attacks in your core class: interviewing family members, reading news articles from those first hours and days, looking at pictures and films, and reading books. We've talked about what we remember from our visit to the memorial in 2019 and the snack that we ate next to the Survivor's Tree. Our conversation drifted to our experience this summer at the City Memorial, to your before and after. Before you knew the horrors of a terrorist attack and the after of an innocence that was gone. 


In 2011, in a ten-year anniversary radio address of 9/11, President Obama said, "Even the smallest acts of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11." And this is the after I want to celebrate: That the world holds are more good than bad. That a simple act of kindness can connect us, create beauty, and forever change us. 
I love you more than all the water in the oceans and all the stars in the sky. 

Love, Mom 

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