...to ever recover from 9/11.

The 9 AM anniversary of 9/11 has just passed, the point of the first plane to hit the North Tower. Memories jerk me backward. The second plane has already hit the South, and both buildings are ablaze in the top-most floors. Some people trapped there are using the last drop of will they have, and jumping to their deaths. Emergency vehicles are swarming to the spot; crowds are gathering, drawn to the dying buildings. A flight from Boston to California has been hijacked. Another is headed for Washington DC.

Across the United States millions are breathlessly watching, their minds scrolling through the list of people they know in New York City, fingers frantically punching in phone numbers, or email addresses. Parents with grown children in the city are getting in their cars, from as far away as California. Clergy are preparing for vigils. The military and police services are cancelling leaves.

In countries with media access, the news that America has taken a hit sends shockwaves through capitals, newsrooms, and financial markets. A sudden global insecurity grips the guts of government officials.

I am not yet reacting on a clear blue day in Michigan, setting up to do some writing, noting that the house painter has begun to tackle the front, and is up on hisladder. My friend next door calls urgently. "Have you heard from Adam? Is he working on Wall Street? Put on your television right away!"

I do. And I see. After 10 seconds, I rush to the phone to call Adam and Kelly. They are supposed to be on a plane to California! They do not answer, and I leave a message on phone and email: ARE YOU OKAY? I rush to the computer, and type an email to Alexis, Adam's mother-in-law in New Jersey: "Have you heard from them. Are they OKAY?"

I call Rob: 'COME HOME.' I awake Dan in Madison: 'Put on the television right away. There has been an attack on the World Trade Center in NYC. We haven't yet heard from them.' The painter checks in, then leaves.

Adam. Kelly. I feel a rising panic, just as Alexis returns my email: They are ALL RIGHT. Tremendous relief. One by one, we get the all clear from friends and family with children in New York and Washington. We are the lucky ones; many are not.

Something stirs within me. I've just spent 10 days in New York City. I cannot desert this beloved city, my birthplace. I want to help, I want to feel the warm cheeks of Adam and Kelly, and I want to go. Colleagues do not respond to my idea that, as mental health workers, we should rent a van and head for New York. Rob does after a call from Reuters, driving himself there, and helping out a company he just finished training in Ann Arbor. Six weeks later, I join the Red Cross and spend 12 intense days helping families.

It was an unforgettable, transformative experience.

Today, for some reason on this particular anniversary, I am drawn backward, to the families I met, and tried-- in vain--to help.

What do I find on the Internet?

That John Burnside's remains were found 10 days after I finished my work as a Red Cross worker, and visited his widow Sandra on the upper East Side.

That Lucia Crifasi, whose Italian mother could not face me when I came to the house, now has a street named after her in Queens, at 69th Street and Myrtle Avenue

That the parents of Yelena Melnichenko from Lithuania have been denied access to Yelena's young son, Erik, whom I met with his young widowed father.

That only partial remains of Jeanette Menichino were found, but her mother volunteers at the Tribute Museum I visited last year at Ground Zero, and her husband Anthony, so desperately suicidal when I met him, is probably still alive.

That the common-law husband of Ruth Ketler, the poet Robert Dow, seems never to have published again.

That Anthony Luparello's daughter attended the trial of Moussaoui, 2006. I helped her daughter make a trip to Ground Zero to see where her grandfather was killed.

No spaces exist between one moment in time, and the next. For all of these families, 9/11/2001 is right next to 9/11/2008.

...to say good- bye to Ruby

Today, our little Jack Russell Ruby will spend her full last day on earth. I say earth, because when a living thing dies, it's not too clear what happens.

Ruby may live on in some other way, in our memory. Her spirit may blow in on a cloud, or a sudden gust of wind. Or she could reincarnate into another black and white animal, like the zebra I saw in Africa last month.



Ruby doesn't know that we plan to say a final good-bye to her tomorrow at the vets, unless a miracle happens and her boundless, independent spirit returns in the next 24 hours, AND she becomes continent again.

Does she guess this is why yesterday, I pulled a precious t-bone out of the freezer for her to gnaw on, and why last night we took her to the Dairy Queen with our young neighbor girls, and gave Ruby the true love of her life, ice cream? Has she figured out why we are taking her to her beloved park every day, even though she has stopped leading us around, and, like lots of older beings, doesn't want to get too far from the car?

These little treats are part of our good-bye to her. I try to carry her around a lot, nuzzle my nose until her neck, just memorize her woodsy smell, and the feel of her scratchy fur on my cheek. When she ambles into the kitchen I bend down to smooth her back and tickle her behind the ears. She is following me around, like a small puppy, like my elder parents who like to keep track of me, nearly every day.



Memories of Ruby as a puppy are crowding in: the way she slowly walked up to us at the kennel in Tecumseh, not wanting to look too eager, or not trusting that we would love her. See, she was the last to adopted in her litter, because her head was all black. I don't know why people found that unattractive. We loved it, just like we loved her combination of affection-seeking, and independence. We didn't love her fur though. It was unruly and wirey, and she looked like a small, squat sheep if we didn't have her groomed like the runt terrier she was.

Some runt: she ran on three legs when chasing a squirrel, and killed her share of little furry animals. One day she got a squirrel, killed it quick, and when Rob went to the garage for a shovel to bury the victim, Ruby got busy. Rob searched high and low for the dead animal, Ruby following him around all innocent-like. It wasn't until the squirrel's tail gave it away, sticking straight up from the shallow grave Ruby dug in under 30 seconds.

There were more endearing traits: She loved to sleep on the top of bed pillows,



and laid still for nearly an hour if Rob stroked her stomach.

Dan was her favorite: she hoisted herself up on two legs for him when he greeted her, and licked his face when he bent down. She was front and center at Adam and Kelly's wedding, not to be forgotten, depositing a turd right in front of the wedding arch, minutes before the ceremony

When Ruby is scared, she puts one paw on my foot, for security, or tries to climb up my legs. Once she jumped on her high bed as a call for help, her head swollen with a bad sore. This spring, she howled if I went outside and left her indoors, and camped under the computer table while I worked.

These was her only signs of vulnerability. Introduced into a household that already held a large blond Lab, Ruby decided to be top dog.
She dominated Lucy, and our neighbor's Lab Remington, until Lucy herself grew old, and lame. Larger dogs in the park came to avoid her; she had a way of grabbing them by the jowls and hanging on.

People seemed to love her, though. Some begged for a chance to housesit, like our wacky painter and his family who drove her to Grand Rapids and let her swim in a friend's swimming pool. She was cute, like a little toddler.

Some toddler. Ruby was always on the kill, and alert for bushy-tailed animals like the fox. We once had one in the neighborhood; it walked down our road in broad daylight, daring Ruby to find him.

I'm sorry she never chased a fox, and had to settle for squirrels. Now she's very old, she's ill with kidney disease, and the pleasure parts of her life, like a faux-fox chase, are over. It's time we helped her along to wherever she'll land in the universe. I'd like to believe in reincarnation, or heaven, during times like these. I'd like to believe that Ruby will join Lucy, and Al, who loved dogs.


We were never such dog lovers, Rob and I, people being too interesting and compelling and rewarding. But we liked tending, we loved our animals, and I don't know what we'll do about that.

Today I begin to pack away some of our dog things: coat brushes, beds, trimmers, carrying cases. They will go in the attic next to the flattened crib, and broken wagon, and high chair, for the next generation of children, and dogs, if there is one. I don't have a replacement strategy, not yet.

But it won't be a new dog. Maybe when we're in our 80's, and moving around less, and not wanting to think about our inevitable future, we'll need the challenge of a pet. But not now, not yet.

DUMBO

What's it gonna take to spend more time in New York City? I have to, on three counts: Adam and Kelly, my obsession with returning to my ancestors' past, and the sheer excitement of new ideas (like a media company wants a piece of the Rwanda project).

On Reason Number Two: I did not walk to Hudson Avenue yesterday, when Adam and I visited DUMBO. So much of the surrounding area has chi-chi-ed. Amber-lit bars stuffed with vintage chairs and hardware. Sleek, spare storefronts teasing young couples with carefully placed, just-cool-enough furniture and clothes. These are the nouveaux rich, needing pet bakeries, chocolateries, pris fixes restaurants with white tablecloths set inside tall brick warehouses, carefully preserved.

I did not want to see what had happened to Hudson Avenue, our son's grandfather's birthplace, a cobble-stoned street sliding down to the East River. I want to remember it like I saw it in 2006 before the explosion of high-end housing and shops: a simple, nearly dilapidated three-story frame dwelling, next to a row of others looking just like it. Last I checked, they cost $500,000 each. Adam tells me that this area, Vinegar Hill and DUMBO is the priciest part of Brooklyn.

What do the stock analysts and surgeons make of this: On Front Street, a local rich developer has built a large room for a large restored carousel, his wife's pet project. I stood there transfixed. It retains all it its old-world grandeur: the carved seats and horses, painted in pale pastels, even the music playing in the background.

Except, it's a diorama. One stands behind red ropes and the only the play button is fitted inside your imagination. Pale-faced Irish and German-American women in long skirts covering the hind ends of the horses, their straw hats with ribbons whipping about, stout old women with brooches and white handkerchiefs sprouting from their bosoms, sitting in the fixed carriages, their smiles taking them back, back, to when they jumped on and jumped off carousels as children.

I want it to be true that my grandparents take Petra and Theodore and Fred to whirl on this carousel, only blocks from home. Why? What am I hoping for? Everlasting life?

‘Family, ’ as it is known in the United States, is going down. Maybe we were never destined to be a nation where family members stayed connected with one another. The United States is almost completely comprised of immigrants, most of us come from people who picked up and abandoned their native shores and families. We have no real feel for the people they left behind. They’re some names on a line on a family trees, the people between a birth and death date.

But one day, some mother or father said an anguished good-bye to a young man, woman, or family. The next generation completely and forever disappeared from view, driving down the lane in a horse-drawn cart, or pulling away from a dock.

I certainly don’t know these people from the four sides of my family. I can’t say I have relationships with hardly anyone who pre-dates my grandparents or great-grandparents, and I know little about what moved them, stirred them, or drove their survival.

I do know I have stood on a vacant lot in Brooklyn that once held a Lutheran church where my paternal great-great grandparents baptized my grandmother’s mother.
I have stood in a hushed, nearly hidden cemetery in Tennessee where my maternal great-great-grandfather is buried with his wife and infant.

I have sat in a marbled cathedral with swooping bats and swallows where my Filipino grandfather was baptized.

I have been driven across the fields where my maternal great grandparents raised vegetables, cows, chickens, and children.

I recently uncovered a faint line of writing in an old family bible, newly given to my original Norwegian ancestors in 1860. If I hadn’t been curious about a page that seemed stuck to another one, I would have never known that my great-great-grandfather Aanen Atlakson died of stomach cancer on Christmas Eve, 1869, quickly followed by his eldest son, who died of pneumonia.

This is the only story I have. I suspect that a string of tragic deaths in Aanen's family--he and his wife Caterina lost their last five children as infants --silenced the stories of coming to America.

Without stories, I cling to facts, dig up facts, or make up stories of my own. What else can I do?

I've just read a very cynical, but somehow comforting article in the April 7th New Yorker about babyboomers and aging. At least someone is tackling this huge elephant in the Health Club.

The starting point for Michael Kinsley's essay is age 60, which I am, newly. He makes the point that our generation will no doubt work on competitively aging (The title is something like: Mine is Longer Than Yours: The last boomer game.) This irks him no end, especially since he has Parkinson's disease, a condition which will not foreshorten his life, but does put him in a category of someone unlucky enough to have already been written off.

Kinsley speaks of in invisible dividing line between those babyboomers who are still on the ascendency, and those who know they have already peaked and are THOUGHT to be on the decline, either physically, occupationally, or financially. A depressing thought this , especially for someone like me who is hoping to have a really brand new career or two before I kick the bucket.

What Kinsley doesn't mention is that we babyboomers are, in part, following in the large footsteps of our parents, some of whom do not consider themselves old, even in their eighties, despite bad disease.

My mother mentions this morning that she and my father saw a 'very depressing' show on PBS last night called, 'Caring For Your Parents.' This was brave on their part, since my father nearly succumbed from cancer treatment, and I spent many weeks in Florida caring for them while he was in the ICU.

(Note: I was more cowardly, preferring to tape it than watch something I knew would be depressing from the reviews in the paper. The main protagonists in this little documentary were mainly devoted daughters, of various means, and the parents were frail elderly.)

"It was depressing because I don't want to get that way." What the solution, I asked her. "These old people should move to places like where your Dad and I live, in The Villages. That's the only solution." I might mention right here that my father will be 88 in a few weeks, and my mother is 85.

So, I gently ask her, what should happen when these Villages people get really old and need care. This is a better question than, 'What the hell is going to happen when you or Dad are really feeble?'

My parents have their own game. Each is convinced he/she will outlive the other. "Just put me on a float," my mother said from their home in land-locked Central Florida.

Then she chuckled, and I laughed, and we both giggled at the thought of daily funeral pyres on the water hazards of each of their many golf courses. "Right," I said. " You get two penalty shots if you go into the water. One for the water, the other for disturbing the body."

My local postmaster has a tan

I had it all rehearsed. Walk to meet the mail guy in his truck, and offer my condolences for what he does day after day in this awful weather. Then feel like I've helped my fellow human being with a dollop of decent empathy.

But noooo..he has a tan, I mean, a really nice tan like the kind you get in Aruba or Barbados, all uniformly medium brown, the kind of tan you want to save, like it's liquid warmth.

Dashed, and disappointed, I had an attack of upper middle class self-righteous behavior: if my MAILMAN has a tan, why don't I?

Because, my fellow pale lovelies, I spent big kays on a wonderful winter weekend in New York City, celebrating my 60th birthday. Wouldn't trade that for 5 days in the sun, no way.

But, and here comes the attack, I should be able to have BOTH. Whenever I want or need a vacation, I SHOULD be able to go, at least, to Florida. Trick is, Florida and anywhere south this year is over $700 in air fare. Okay, this is turning into a complaint.

Instead, I will check the Web ONE MORE TIME for something, anything. Forecast for this evening is 1-3 inches of snow.

Dwarfism. I mean no respect to the many individuals who are genetic dwarfs, when I say that I can so easily feel dwarfed. What's It Gonna Take to stand tall, against odds?

Take yesterday. Read a great deal about Rwanda's efforts toward unity and reconciliation, which are huge, driving, and successful. How can my little project really help all that much? What if it undermines the good work of that Commission? It might be laughed off, when I finally get an audience with the major players in the government. It may be totally off the wall, and stupid.

You see the language I use? SO WHAT if the project is finally rejected? At least I gave it a shot.

Then, glutton for pushinment, I read about the scions of academics who have written and published about these weighty matters. I don't even have an academic appointment. SO WHAT??? Why should I feel small when I'm proposing a project that isn't even going to compensate me very well, except for my travel and expenses.

You see how I let myself feel small and insignificant.....So, how to stand tall and feel big?

Think of this Rwanda project as play, not work. Then I can apply these standards: do I enjoy it? Is it hurting anyone? Do others like playing with me? Does it bring me joy? So what, if it comes to nothing, the way play comes to nothing, except an exercise in joy and creativity?

I'm back jogging. Where did these little hills and dips come from on our main street. I never noticed them before. Or is it that my 60 year-old body must make more adjustments this season? To run up the tiny hill, it takes just a TAD more effort to lift my legs out of the hip sockets hips and push off. To coast down the itsy hill, I have to strain SLIGHTLY more to suck in the ole gut. I also notice that I run more deliberately, forcing my left foot to stop pronating, lifting my knees when the pavement gets uneven. This is a nod to my age, and my fear of falling again like I did in the Fall, on wet rocks in the woods. I'm adjusting to some new reality.

The word 'adjustments' offends me somehow. Adjustments bring to mind things like naps, walkers, canes. To counter these adjustments, I run farther than I should, since I'm just returning to my season. I barrel down long concrete sidewalks, stepping around waiting bus riders and hopping over glassy patches of ice. At the crosswalks, I run in place impatiently. It's a deliciously cold, sunny, windless morning. I carve out a new route, and relish measuring the miles later, in the car. I have the air, my legs have the muscle, and my spirits rise knowing I can run another season, do another race, inch into another age category.

Sunday Night at the Movies

Highly recommend the HBO series, "John Adams." It began tonight.



Is it because I'm 60 that I attached myself to these images of our nation's founding. I'm all like chills and wows over the scenes of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Washington. Flashes of remembering the Declaration of Independence we had to memorize for US History Class. Tickled at the idea of Benjamin Franklin re-writing it on the spot, in a spare room, with a quill pen.

Must be the whole Obama magic, plus the thrill of watching Rwanda turn into a Republic. Or--how about this--the parallel development going on with myself, as I declare myself independent of sibling obligations, at least within my family of origin.

"Let these truths be self-evident: That older sisters are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and are not duty-bound to take care of younger adult brothers who have somehow lost their way.

Also recommend Gabriela Montera a pianist who does incredible improvisations upon classical music, like Pacabel, and Bach Variations. You...will....die....

But not before you swoon over this music.