The 5th 9/11

We’ve been on vacation– physically and mentally from work and the Everyday. It seems appropriate that this first Monday back to the “real world” would be the anniversary of 9/11 and especially bleakish.

What I really remember now– layered on the image of being at the site where the Twin Towers used to be– and the memory of my usual morning with Katie and Matt interrupted by our shared shock– are the days afterward. When it was still raw and unresolved in the media. I sat in our little sitting room upstairs and painted buildings for our Christmas village. Creating order and color while the television stayed tuned in to the latest information.

Someday, someone might find the dates written on the bottom of each completed little house or barn and wonder why I should be painting on those dates. I know that, in the past, I’ve wondered about old letters or diaries that seem to skip past some monumental date as though it were just another day of laundry or marketing. But I get it now. Each new paint spotch on my palette, each stroke of the brush, each bright new addition to my wintery town was one step towards feeling less frightened, less mournful, less stymied.

But that’s just what I remember.