I Lied

Okay, well, I didn't lie.

I changed my mind.

I'm back.

It was hamburger and onions that brought me back, rereading an old entry inspired by a thread on a forum I visit. Hamburger and onions and kidisms and Dean Martin and a feeling that something's not quite with out practicing Space Age Housewifery.

Right now I'm relaxing with a nostalgic candle scent in every room and recapturing that elusively comforting autumn ambience that is the essence of October.

You don't have to welcome me back. You might say "I told you so," and that would be all right. It's better than lying the couch with my feet up playing Bubble Breaker and wishing there were something to say over a slice of pumpkin pie and a late-night decaf coffee.

Good night for now. I hope it rains tomorrow, so I can feel guiltless about making leaf-shaped cookies and hot cocoa with real chocolate marshmallows.

Goodbye...

The time has come for me to close up shop here at this version of The Space Age Housewife. These pages have served their purpose for me. I'm not going to delete the blog or its archives, but I will no longer be posting here.

If you are still interested in the midlife crisis of a Space Age Housewife, you can find me at my new location: Space Age Housewife.

I have also created a new blog, a place I'd like to use for writing fiction, essays, articles, and whatever else comes to my brain. You can find it at Writer's Block.

Thank you for reading.

Yeah, it's a mid-life crisis!

Turning forty was fine for me.

Okay, well, there was a little anxiety.

A little.

I decided to be thirty-ten for a while, but after only a few hours, it had gotten old. It wasn't cute. Neither was I.

Still, it was fine and not too troubling. Inside I still felt twenty, so what difference did it make?

That was before my daughter's twentieth birthday began looming. It's still more than two months away, but I find myself flashing back more often to my pregnancy with her, the unusual warmth of that spring, and my own innocent youth.

I've occasionally struggled with the idea that I am my mother's age (isn't she 40? 38? Something like that), but this is the first time I have struggled with the idea that I am my daughter's age. Those who say that age is "just a number" are partially right. Age is also in the perception. Old is relative. We all know the old saw - you're only as old as you feel. How do we perceive ourselves? How do I perceive myself?

I find it odd and fascinating that I can consider myself a peer to both my daughter and my mother when 48 years separate the two of them. Perhaps that's what they mean by "sandwich generation." I can relate to Kayla; I can relate to Mom. I feel the experiences of both and can nod and smile and say, "I know just what you mean."

This feeling is not unwelcome. I'm glad to know there are still new feelings to explore, that the dusty past can become new again seen through someone else's eyes. How, though, to reconcile that my oldest, my first baby, is about to leave her teens? She has her own life, her own chapters to write, her own feelings to explore and sort. She has dreams, beautiful, blue-skied dreams, and my only dream for her is that she's happy.

No one has ever been able to adequately define a mid-life crisis for me, and I've thought fleetingly in recent years that I was having one. I wasn't. I am now. I no longer need others' definitions, because I'm grappling with the bewilderment of mid-life right now, myself, trying to figure out where I fit in.

Mom turned sixty-eight yesterday. Kayla's careering toward twenty. Somewhere in between, I'm still the middle child.

Ever had a roommate?

I wrote this as an exercise on a message board, and it's all too, too true:

Dear Former Roommate:

You know, it's been almost 22 years, and I'm still a little angry with you. Maybe a lot angry. Maybe I should get over it, but the way you treated me and my belongings was horrendous, and I hope you have managed to grow up and learn some responsibility since then.

That jewelry you took with you when did the fly-by-night move? That was mine. You know - the earrings and necklaces that were in my jewlery box on my dresser in my bedroom. I know, I know. They weren't labelled as mine, but I had thought perhaps the location might give a clue to ownership.

Remember the rent? That monthly charge for living in the apartment that you never paid? The one-third that I kept covering, along with my own one-third, because you hadn't been "able" to find a job yet? Can I get that back yet? You did, after all, set up that complex repayment plan so I'd be sure to know you fully intended to make good on taking advantage of my stupidity generosity in paying your share. Just to show you what a stand-up woman I am, I'll forgive the grocery debt. I didn't really want to eat the food I bought anyway. It was just for looks.

The new outfit, though. That really hurt. I had my first credit card - a Dayton's store charge - and I had bought a perfect pair of jeans and a gorgeous purple sweater. When I brought them home from the store, you wanted to know if you could borrow the outfit. Never mind that you were one jeans size bigger than I was, and that you wore a D-cup bra as opposed to my A-cup and therefore would have stretched out my new sweater. Never mind that I hadn't even worn my new clothes yet. You wanted to borrow the outfit, and I said no.

I should have guessed when I left for the evening that you would have just gone ahead and taken the clothes anyway. I should have known, so I suppose it was my fault that you stole my jeans and my sweater. It certainly wasn't my fault, however, that you decided you didn't like your date after all and thought that crying "rape" would be a good way to get attention. That you admitted to me that that's what you had done was unbelievably insensitive and offensive, considering you knew that I'd been an actual victim of such a crime just a few years earlier.

When you told me the police had taken the clothes as evidence, I know I exploded. And you deserved it. "I didn't think you'd mind," you said about "borrowing" my clothes. Didn't think I'd mind? Didn't think I'd mind? I specifically told you not to take my clothes. How could think I wouldn't mind.

Your night flight wasn't long after that. I suppose you "didn't think I'd mind" about your taking my jewelry either.

You don't know this, but I went to the police station to recover my new clothes. Because I was not the one who signed the paperwork as the owner, the police would not release my property to me. I couldn't prove that it WAS my property. Your false rape case went nowhere, you disappeared, and I never, ever got those clothes back. They were my first purchase on my first charge card, and when the bill came later, I was bitter over writing out the check for a sweater and jeans I could never wear.

But it's not thanks for nothing, old roommate. I learned more life lessons from a few months sharing an apartment with you than I could ever have thought possible. That venerable old teacher Experience surely did sock it to me, didn't She?

'Bye.

Who am I?

For years, I was a WOHM.

For years, I was a SAHM.

Now I have a job again, and I've gone to M-F noon to 3, with the occasional Saturday thrown in. That makes at least 15 hours a week, putting me solidly in the part-time arena.

So does that make me a PTWOHM? But if I'm a PTWOHM, and I also spend many hours each week at home or school doing SAHM stuff, does that make me a PTSAHM?

I seem to recall that one of the "rules" is that you can't work AND be a SAHM, so while there might be a designation for PTWOHM, indicating that she does not work full-time, there can be no designation for PTSAHM.

Now, if I calculate the number of hours spent at home, school, and children's activities, and they overwhelm the number of hours I am at work, am I a SAHM or a WOHM. Whoops, no, there again is the rule that any amount of work negates the SAHM label.

Does it change if I can bring my children to work with me? I work during the hours that Space Age daughter is normally in school, but it's after Space Age son's school hours, so he comes with me.

Does that make me a SAHM? No, because we're not at home. Does it make me a SAWM (stay-at-work mom?)? Does it make Space Age Son a WOHS (work-out-of-home son?)?

Maybe I am a PTSAHWOHM?

:)


(As a note, I really don't want or expect answers to my questions - this was just a bit of fluff meant to poke fun at the labels we often insist on giving ourselves and how, unlike men, our identities seem to be wrapped up in parenting vs. working, as though somehow the two were mutually exclusive.)

We interrupt this program for an important message

It goes without saying that what I miss most about Minnesota is proximity to my family, the important people who helped shape my life and love me no matter what.

I must admit, however, that there is something else from Minnesota that I miss with a startling amount of regularity. I want some right now. I want Old Dutch potato chips. And some French onion dip. And a Dad's root beer in a glass bottle.

I don't want much. Just Old Dutch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Happy New Year

Strange days it's been recently.

December was busy - we threw a party, the oldest Space Age daughter visited for a week, we traveled over Christmas, and we spent three days in a row feasting and celebrating with large crowds of people. There was no one quiet, moving moment, no tiny break in the action when I could allow myself to be washed over with peacefulness, if even for a minute.

I'm going to try to take that minute tonight, somehow, at some moment.

The Space Age husband is spending the afternoon cleaning the garage. It's his mental cleansing time, his fresh start for the new year, his way of feeling organized and grounded and strengthened for new challenges.

The Space Age children are playing with puzzles upstairs. All they want to know is when we will break out the rootbeer and potato chips for their New Year's celebration - for them, we do the countdown a few hours earlier than the calendar change actually takes place.

Me? I'm cleaning. I need that fresh start feeling too. So many pressures and stresses have been weighing on my brain. I wasn't able to enjoy the Christmas season as fully and wholeheartedly as I would have liked. I've made a new resolve to work more on my own physical and mental health and my own peace of mind. My husband must have sensed this - two of my Santa gifts this year were jigsaw puzzles. It was his way of saying, "Take some time for yourself."

Cleaning helps. I'm putting away most of the Christmas decor, though I'll leave up some remnants of festivity until the Ephiphany. I like a clean house for New Year's. Later, when our work is done, we'll make some fondue, open a bottle of wine, give the kids their treats, and celebrate the new year with music and games and enjoying each other's company. I will try to grab that moment of peacefulness my mind and heart are craving.

To you and to yours, my best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous, and very happy New Year.

Seven

The middle Space Age child turned seven yesterday.

Seven!

When time speeds by at a dizzying blur, and the baby with the side part and the plastic barrettes, just learning to sit up, is suddenly a first-grader with three missing teeth and a stack of books to read. That's age seven.

She spent the day making bead crafts, coloring, and decorating her own birthday cake (it was chocolate with chocolate frosting, pink sprinkles, and tiny colored marshmallows). She chose spaghetti with salad for her birthday supper and afterward we had huge squares of cake with cookies and cream ice cream.

I never tire of looking at her face. It's a small face, tiny-featured, delicate and expressive. Her eyes seem older than seven; behind their guileless innocence lies a gentle wisdom. My chubby baby has grown into a tall and gangly girl with enough love and caring to embrace the world.

She is beautiful in so many ways. And she is seven.

Space Age Progeny...

It's been too long since my last updates - busy season, anyone? - but I'm going to recommit to the Spage Age Blog.

A bit of a small start here, after a week traveling for Christmas. This is the oldest Spage Age daughter, the apple of my eye, and me, on Christmas Eve...

Don't Forget to VOTE!

It's Election Day in the United States. Don't forget to exercise your right to make your voice heard: Vote!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate!

I'm looking forward to ham soup for supper, trick-or-treat, then some warm cider with kettle corn and apples while we watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"

Stay warm and be careful.

Six Years

Happy anniversary to me. We've been in Idaho six years now. We left Minnesota early on Saturday morning, October 7, 2000, arriving in Idaho late in the afternoon on Monday, October 9, 2000.

Six years ago today, I was arranging things in our temporary corporate housing, setting up cell phones, talking with the real estate agent from the relocation company, and enrolling my middle schooler in classes. She started school that week on Thursday, after I jumped through hoops to get her admitted 'to a school in the neighborhood in which we hoped to buy a house; our temporary apartment was not within the district boundaries for that school.

We did find and buy a house before the end of the month, the house I'm sitting in even as we speak. It looks a lot different than it did six years ago - window treatments, carpet, paint, landscaping, and a deck. We've gradually stamped our own personalities on what was once and empty shell of sheet rock and plain putty-colored carpet.

When we arrived in Idaho, I thought perhaps we'd be here two years. Maybe three. While I was pregnant with my son in 2001, I thought certainly he'd be born in Minnesota. We'd move back before his birth.

He's more than four-and-a-half now. We're still here.

As the years have passed, my angst over leaving Minnesota has lessened. I still miss it. I miss living within shouting distance of my parents and my siblings. I miss standing on the soil of my grandparents and great-grandparents.

Somehow, though, it doesn't hurt as much anymore. We visit, and the roads travel both ways. We've established new, fledgling roots here. We have friends, our children have friends, and for lack of a more colorful term, we have a network. And finally, finally - I've come to love the house that once felt cold. I achingly longed for the house we'd left behind, the 1964 rambler with the basement and the real woodburning stove and the built in bar lovingly sanded and finished by my husband. That was home. This was...something else.

For years - two or three, maybe - I felt as though I were visiting in someone else's space. Not mine. Something different somehow, and I never felt settled.

Today, six years after we pulled out of my parents' driveway in a green minivan, bound for parts unfamiliar, I can say that this two-story house with the brick-red front door feels like home.

If you drive up today, you'll see the autumn harvest wreath hanging on the front door, the jaunty scarecrow in the yard, surrounded by the biggest pumpkins we could find at Albertson's, and the planter boxes on the front porch festooned with pumpkins large and small. The mums have grown big, and the pear and juniper trees stand three times as large as they once did.

Home has more than one definition, I've learned. I've also learned that there's enough love and affection in my heart to embrace them all.

Still thinking of Jon

I can't help but continue thinking of him, particularly in light of the recent discovery in his case. I don't want to appear as if I'm obsessive about the life of this young man I barely knew, but my brain has yet to make sense of his apparent death.

I can picture him as clearly as yesterday, sitting at my table, joking with my children, wearing his green t-shirt, thoughtfully listening to his camp colleagues describe their lives and their goals. He remained quieter than the young women; seemingly content to listen and observe. His manner with my children - treating them as intelligent beings, equals and friends - earned their respect and regard, as well as that of my husband and me.

My six-year-old daughter still asks about Jon and the other camp counselors.

"Will they come back next year?" she asks, eagerly awaiting another week of vacation bible school and in particular the water games with buckets and balloons.

"Somebody will," I answer gently, wondering if I can avoid ever telling her about what happened to Jon.

It seems incomprehensible that we spent a genial Tuesday evening with Jon, bid our farewells that Thursday, and then on Saturday he went up a mountain from which he would never return. It's incomprehensible that this mountain took Jon, plucked him from the arms of his loving family, took him from the work he so obviously loved, and kept him, refusing to give him back to the dozens of searchers who blanketed the area in the last two weeks of July.

The world was blessed to have Jon Francis, and my heart aches for him and his family and all those for whom and with whom he worked and lived and prayed.

I can't make sense of it. Perhaps I never will.

Jon Francis News

For those who remember the story of Jon Francis,
there is news. Please see the website established in his name for updates. My prayers are with the Francis family and all of Jon's loved ones.

Evil dwells in the supermarket...

During today's grocery shop, I found an evil beyond all evils. Something truly decadent, something that has the potential to wield unfathomable power over me.

It is Pumpkin Spice Egg Nog.

Things were bad enough when the retailers sold egg nog only during the Christmas season - remember when the mistletoe-and-holly cartons began appearing in supermarket refrigerators no sooner than December first? Then they started pushing it back to Thanksgiving. Now? Egg nog is becoming as much a Halloween tradition as it is Christmas, the September and October versions of the cartons featuring pumpkins and silhouettes of witches. I try to avoid buying egg nog before Thanksgiving. I'd like to at least make a pretense of keeping it for Christmas.

But this stuff I had to have. It called me with its spicy siren song, "Take me home!"

It's rich. Creamy. Cinnamon-and-nutmeg-y. An evil to transcend all evils.

And so, so, so good.

It's too early for pumpkins and homemade cinnamon sugar doughnuts and popcorn and hot apple cider in front of the fireplace. And it's much, much too early for egg nog.

Isn't it?

It really is autumn...

...And I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Gymnastics. Girl Scouts. Two PTA committees. Sunday School. Beyond that, a wedding to attend and at least two major scrapbook events.

Who am I, and what have I done with myself?

I have two corkboards above my desk - one for the children's school activities and one for the various extracurriculars. Two calendars. Two coupons tacked up that I will probably never use, one haircut appointment card, and a reminder to call the dentist.

I re-upped at the gym and my husband bought an elliptical. I'm into two books at once, one fiction and one true crime.

All I really want to do sometimes is sit here and goldbrick.

I made pumpkin bread the other day. Two loaves from scratch. It was delicious. I wanted more today, but my trip to the mall during school hours (a vain search for a dressy fall jacket for Little Miss Space Age), five big loads of laundry, and a grocery run with The Boy in tow precluded my cooking it from scratch. Anticipating this, I bought the Williams Sonoma Pumpkin Pecan Spice Bread mix. The whole house smells of it now. I'm saving it for supper though, to be served with chicken chili. Mr. Space Age would never forgive me if he came home to the smell of pumpkin bread and I had eaten it all!

The laundry needs to be finished, and I did leave one of the bathrooms upstairs in half-cleaned fashion, blue Lysol still doing its best to cling to the side of the bowl. I'm wondering how long I can sit here before I give in to the call of anti-bacterial duty.

I'd goldbrick some more for the moment, but The Boy is at my elbow. "Now can I have my Danimals, Mom? Please? Now? Now? Now? Now? Now? Now?"

PTA, pumpkin, Lysol and Danimals.

They'll get you every time.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

We went to the flea market.

Mr. Space Age was determined. So determined, in fact, that he offered to take the children and let me stay home. Alone.

It was a tempting offer.

I went, though. In the end, I couldn't resist the family outing and the promise of a pumpkin spice latte on the way home. It was interesting, however, that it was I who found many treasures and not Mr. Space Age himself.

We brought home with us a lovely set of silver, service for four, including soup spoons, soda spoons, and a serving spoon. I've always wanted to have silver; my mother uses her wedding silver every day. When I selected the 25 pieces, priced at two dollars each, the elderly woman selling them said, "Oh, I hate to charge you so much for those. I'll let you have all of them for $30." She wrapped them carefully and placed them in a plastic bag for me. It was my first treasure of the afternoon.

Shortly after I completed that purchase, I went to catch up with Mr. Space Age, who had taken the children to look along the aisles of booths ahead of us. As I walked, from the corner of my eye I spied a booth full of Pyrex. More Pyrex than I had ever seen in one place before, all of it vintage. There were at least a dozen patterns, including the Crazy Daisies that remind me of my mother. Nestled in one of the top shelves of bowls and covered dishes, I found some that matched a yellow pattern I have at home. My mother bought a set of nested mixing bowls for me some years back, vintage pieces she'd found on eBay while searching for another, more elusive yellow bowl. Included in this booth were a twin for the largest of my mixing bowls and a small casserole. I asked about the casserole.

"It doesn't have a lid. You can have it for three dollars."

No lid? Okay. I have the same-sized casserole in a 50-year-old snowflake pattern, and the two can share the lid that came with that one.

As I finally rounded a corner and saw Mr. Space Age, he waved me over to where he was standing.

In front of a radio.

I collect vintage radios, and ever since our honeymoon, Mr. Space Age has shared that interest. I guess I can credit him with finding one of today's treasures. It's a Panasonic radio, large, monospeaker, perhaps from the 1960s. It broadcast one of the afternoon's football games, demonstrating its worth not just visually. It's guts are in working order. Twenty dollars for that? Please! Let me take it off your hands!

"If it hadn't sold this weekend," the man said pleasantly as he took my twenty-dollar bill, "I was going to take it home and listen to it. I have one that's stereo." I told him about my 1964 Magnavox console stereo, the one I bought at a garage sale eight years ago in near mint condition for just $25.

I could have made several more purchases from the Pyrex lady, and one booth had a tempting selection of vintage cookbooks. If two young children hadn't asked for lunch when they did, I might not have escaped with any cash left in my purse at all.

I did, however, get that pumpkin spice latte on our way home.

WHAT did you just say?

Mr. Space Age and I cleaned the garage today, some four and a half hours of going through boxes of stored items, separating those things to be saved, to be donated, and to be thrown away. We combed through items we hadn't seen since they were packed up to be moved from Minnesota to Idaho six years ago. I found books, toys, games and clothes I thought had been lost forever. The Barbie clothes my aunt made for me in the mid-70s? Check. Books that had been hand-me-downs from my sisters? Check. Maternity clothes my mother made for me in 1986? Check.

We managed to reduce the sentimental "to save" piles to a minimum, and we piled the back of my husband's Durango nearly to bursting with clothes, toys, and household items to be donated. I carefully packed to save emotionally valuable items such as sweaters my mother had knit, a tote bag my grandmother made, tiny "home from the hospital" baby outfits, 40-year-old baby shoes, and the logo-emblazoned jacket I wore when I worked for a Wisconsin radio station.

The third stall of the garage has now been transformed from a gigantic closet into an area we can actually walk and move around in. We can get to the freezer and the beer fridge without climbing over, tripping over, or moving boxes, bags, flotsam, and jetsam. The window can be opened. We can see through it! Mr. Space Age's workbench and tools are once again usable and accessible. It's a good feeling. A clean feeling. That feeling after a productive day's hard work.

Leaning against an old dresser we promised to my friend, my husband casually popped the cap off of a bottle of beer.

"So tomorrow," he said, "Do you want to go to the flea market in town?"

The Gardens

About three weeks ago, while visiting in Minnesota, I took a couple dozen pictures at the Clemens/Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud. These are three of my favorites, though I do plan to post more. I'd like to frame the lantana and the brown-eyed susans.

Being in Minnesota is a tonic for me, and the Gardens underscore that comfortable feeling. We spent the morning there - my husband, my children, my mother and me. Afterward, we stopped at the bakery for fresh bread and treats, which we brought back to my father. It was a lovely day.

September's Winds Of Change

I wrote this piece in September of 2004, as we neared the third anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001.

I’ve always loved this time of year. The blazing heat of August is left behind, giving way to the cooler, fresher air that signals autumn’s imminent return. Windows are thrown open, the clean breeze softly swirling the curtains and breathing life into a summer-stuffy homestead. There is a subtle change that wafts in on the gentle September wind, a sense of newness and spirited vigor. These days are glorious in their simple beauty, days for tossing a cardigan over a tank top and trading shorts for a pair of jeans and soft fuzzy house shoes. Days when the streets are littered with children going back to school, when the sun seems golden and friendly instead of fiery and angry, when the mountains are in crisp relief against the cerulean blue of the sky.

September holds promise, all the hopefulness and joy of a new start, the school year like a blank page awaiting the script of those who would write it. There shines in September a simplicity and innocence, as if we are stepping in unison onto uncracked sidewalks in sturdy, unscuffed new school shoes. It brings with it the tangy scent of fireplace smoke, the snuggly warmth of a flannel-lined corduroy jacket, and the enthusiastic whoops over the sound of the marching band at the high school football game. The plain green trees of waning summer will parlay themselves into vivid works of art in golds and reds and oranges and browns, the brilliant palette of their branches in perpendicular display to the regal strength of their trunks.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, a wistful fondness for the weightless, soft-focus memories of childhood: the first delight of piling up the falling leaves and crunching them under the heels of hard-soled shoes; the comforting smell of chocolate chip cookies baking on an afternoon early in the school year; the excitement of swinging on the metal jungle gym on the playground on a chilly day, the breeze turning cheeks to salmon pink and putting into young minds the idea of hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Whatever the reason, the turn of the calendar page to September has always brought with it that new-school, fresh-start feeling and washed away the oppressive sticky heat of a summer gone on too long.

Three Septembers ago, the sunny façade whitewashed by nostalgia and sweet memories cracked. No. No, it’s not right to say that it cracked.

It shattered.

Three years ago, the winds of September shifted, blowing in a dark and sinister cloud, blackening the once brilliant blue of a postcard-perfect autumn morning. The comforting safety we enjoyed, the cozy hominess of routine, the golden promise of September, all proved then to be a veneer, nothing more than a happy-faced curtain over our collective body, stripped away in a few horrifying minutes, all of our fears laid open and bare, raw and bloody.

I live in the west, in the mountain time zone, two hours behind New York City. Three years ago, most days would find me awake at six in the morning, puttering around making coffee and breakfast while my husband and daughters slept. I was five months pregnant, half the way to a new baby, and already sleep was coming less easily to me. On this particular morning, I slept on and on while my husband quietly got ready for his day and saw our fourteen-year-old to the school bus. By the time I awoke, the sun was playfully poking around the corners of my bedroom drapes, an action that drew patterns of light and shadow on the sleeping face of my younger daughter, just twenty-one months old.

I arose quietly to find the house empty. I remember feeling hopeful that morning. The hope that was developing and swelling in my heart was the first real hope I’d had in the nearly three weeks since my husband had morosely told me his division at work was being eliminated. This was the day he was attending a career fair downtown, and I knew that he would be seen and noticed by someone important, someone who would make the difference for him. I felt the promise of sunny September that morning even as I felt my unborn child kicking himself awake while I silently padded down the stairs to the kitchen.

I poured myself a cup of the coffee my husband had prepared, hearing my young daughter awaken. Grabbing a cup of milk for her, I returned upstairs and ushered my little towhead into the playroom. It was my habit to watch the morning news, but I decided to put PBS on for her while I caught up with my friends on the computer. The playroom television was always set to PBS.

Except that morning.

As I clicked the button on the remote, the picture that sprang into view was at once puzzling and mildly disturbing: the image was that of a tall tower against a blue sky, black and gray smoke billowing above it. It was just after 8:30am; 10:30am in New York. I was watching NBC’s replay of the footage of the moments directly following the impact of the first airplane, a fact I did not immediately know or understand. The image stopped me in my tracks, my outstretched arms balancing coffee in one hand and milk in the other. In my puzzlement I spoke out loud.

“The World Trade Center is on fire?” I asked myself.

And then, as I stood transfixed, I saw in agonizing horror the second plane hit the tower. I don’t remember what the news reporter said in that moment. I heard him speak, but could make no sense of the words. My heart pounded, and my arms slowly lowered to place the coffee and the milk on the bookshelf in front of me. I watched, refusing to believe what my own senses were telling me, my brain literally unable to process what I was seeing.

This was not an accident, my brain told me. From there, I was lost.

When my feet unlocked, they carried me on autopilot to the computer desk. I logged onto my message board, desperate to reach out to someone who could tell me what was happening and what I should be thinking. Someone who could tell me that what I saw wasn’t really happening.

I was among the last of my boardmates to have heard the news. I saw the title of the thread there and shivered: “Holy holy holy!” it read, the panic in those typed words palpable and frightening. Inside that thread, the voices of my friends, scattered across the country and indeed the globe, holding hands in virtual space, trying to comfort each other and make sense of the new world into which we’d suddenly and unwillingly been thrust.

I called my husband. He hadn’t heard. He’d been in meetings all morning, excited and positive and hopeful over a discussion he’d had with a particular employer. I told him in broken words news that he didn’t quite understand. I begged him to come home. It would turn out later that the convention center closed shortly after that call and he was sent home anyway. No one dared to go or be anywhere.

Turning back to the television, I sat on my knees and cradled my daughter on my lap, choking back my fears for her and the new baby I carried. In those first moments, I wondered if my baby would even have a chance to be born. What kind of Brave New World would I be raising my children in? Would there be a world for them at all?

“Want Tubby Tubbies,” my little girl said stubbornly, looking up at me intently with serious blue eyes.

“Ssh…just a minute, okay?” I stroked her hair, unable to take my gaze from the television. I watched the footage replay. I saw the painful shock on the formerly impassive faces of the news reporters. I changed the station to ABC and saw Peter Jennings, his composure as close to wavering as I had ever seen it. Switching the channel once more to NBC, I saw the familiar and once calming face of Tom Brokaw, with no comfort to be found. There was no talk of legality or morality or criminality. There was only talk of lives and families and tragedy and the tens of thousands who may have been trapped inside those buildings as they collapsed and fell.

“September 11, 2001.” I can still hear Tom Brokaw’s voice resonating in my head as he solemnly repeated the date, observing somberly that it was a date that would forever be branded into the memories of Americans, inextricably woven with the tragic atrocities that had occurred that day in New York City, Washington, DC, and a field somewhere in Pennsylvania.

“Mommy okay?” I felt my daughter’s hand brush my cheek, her fingers wet from the tears I hadn’t realized I’d shed. I took her hand and kissed it.

“No, honey, I don’t think so.”

Abruptly I changed the channel to PBS for her, leaving her happily surrounded by innocent sweetness, chattering to herself contentedly while she played. She was undeterred by my uncertainty, and for that I was grateful.

…..

I opened the windows early this morning, letting in the cool, dewy morning breeze as the sun rose over the mountains on the horizon beyond my backyard. I slid open the patio door and stood outside in the still freshness, sipping on my coffee, enjoying the fleeting solitude while the rest of my family slept.

When the morning rush descended as the full light of day bloomed overhead, I lost myself in the tasks at hand: my daughter’s first day of preschool, my son’s appointment at the pediatrician, a deposit at the bank’s drive-through window. I baked cookies this afternoon, our annual tradition to celebrate the first day of school. The clean slate offered by the new year that comes in September was receiving its first delighted scribbles and happy memory-makers.

But somewhere, lurking in the shadows that always accompany the bright sunlight, the images of another sunny September day continue to haunt me, the slideshow pictures clicking softly behind the veil of contentment in my head and heart. The vague unease invariably gives way to the demands of the here and now, but the grim and sinister lie in wait, simmering just below the surface.

September will never be quite the same.