OUR BODIES ABSORB TRAUMA

I write on 9/11 (an iconic number now). I think about the beauty of the Fall day fifteen years ago when I went to work before leaving for vacation. I went to the Board room to find the CEO to touch bases before I left and was curious about the TV being on. I entered and for a moment thought my colleagues were watching a spoof of a King Kong movie. Then I heard the tone of the announcer's voice and sat down next to my boss. We waited to understand the tragedy and then the second tower fell. I grabbed the hand of the CEO and we sat silently as we watched the world tilt and our American innocence slide away. 

After waiting three days to be sure about what I might need to do at work given the heinous tragedy that had occurred, I left for vacation. My husband and I drove through Maine meandering along rivers and stopping in small towns. The weather was exquisite. Painfully perfect. The world was hushed. American flags popped out on every porch and building.
I wept occasionally knowing that the world had changed. Everything was suddenly so precious and so precarious at the same time.

We, you and I, have become somewhat inured to the new 'normal', the new, 'now'.
We still agonize and remember but the freshness of the rupturing moment is gone.
And yet, I absorbed the trauma and it emerges on every perfect Fall day. An ache of realization of the possibility of destruction while in the midst of just rightness doesn't go completely away.