New Rules

This is not the entry I intended to make today. The entry I started to make today, the one I actually started to write, was spun sugar. Sweet and empty. I do not feel sweet today. If I feel empty, it’s an emptiness built of frustration, disillusionment and loss, not necessarily in equal parts. That makes it a very oxymoronic, full “empty” indeed.

It started when I was toying with numbers today, for a simple illustration chart I was putting together. What is the gestation for a mouse? A dog, a cat, a horse, a pig, a cow? On a whim, I looked up human. Yes, I knew it was nine months, but I was dealing in days, and I didn’t know the exact number of days currently in vogue. Of course, there were different answers. Two hundred and sixty-six, two hundred and sixty-nine, two hundred and seventy-four. The actual count didn’t matter. I plugged 269 days into my Excel chart because I liked the article that one came from the best. And found that, to be born today, you would have been conceived on or about September 16, 2001.

Virtually all of the babies born in the United States this week were conceived in a world that had already lost something. I cannot speak for the babies of the rest of the world, whose homelands were also affected to a greater or lesser extent. I am not widely traveled, and I am not well read enough to pretend I can philosophize on the impact of the events of September 11th on other countries.

But babies born from here on out in the United States will be born to parents forever changed by a single day, much as I was born to parents changed by World War II. But today’s parents did not have a chance to prepare themselves for the events of a single day. There were no shadows of war, no news stories, no editorials of premonition that said “we will be attacked”. There was no opportunity to offer assistance when the event occurred. Even the blood we wanted to donate was no help – there were few survivors who required blood. Oh, we did as we could. We displayed flags, we held candlelight vigils, we wept. But there is no Rosie the Riveter for us, no “Uncle Sam wants you”, no request for children to collect scrap metal and gather milkweed pods for fluff to fill life jackets with.

What impact will it make on these children, to realize that the United States is not only as vulnerable as any other nation in the world for an attack, but that it is perhaps a preferred target? Will they become paranoid, closing borders and limiting immigration? Will they become complacent, and simply accept this as a fact of life while going about their business? Will they treat those of Middle East descent with the same cruel skepticism that my parents’ generation treated those of Japanese descent? What difference, if any, will these events make to children who will only know the World Trade Center Towers through pictures of fire and smoke? I wish I knew the answer.

Maybe it’s just my birthday plus the impending move plus the changes at work. I have a good life right now, a very good life. I feel guilty about it, because while I’ve done much to earn this life, what I have done is more along the lines of maintain myself in the social strata I was born into rather than achieve anything spectacular on my own. But, for all I have, all I have achieved, and all that still lies ahead of me, September 11th still lies like a cold, sharp stone in my psyche.

Perhaps it would have helped if I could have actively done something. Sending money, which I did, is the rich man’s prerogative for salving his conscience, and I’m well aware of that. Perhaps it would help if I were more out-spoken and voiced the sometimes unpopular thoughts that flit through my head with no release. This “War on Terrorism”, though great PR, is unwarranted. Terrorism did not make war on us. The Al Qaeda made war on us. I note that my country picks and chooses its “terrorists” carefully. Terrorists who are willing to help us get a free pass to Go, collect $200. Terrorists who help us are Allies. Ah, but I know too little of foreign affairs, and I probably have it all wrong anyhow. And all the news sources in my reach do little to make things more clear to me.

Yet for all that, my over-riding feelings are that a great wrong has been done to us. Those who are guilty of instigating this should be caught and punished. I do not believe in “killing them all and letting God sort them out”. I want us to do the sorting in the here and now.

I know The Professor will read this and cringe. He already feels, and probably rightly so, that anything connected with September 11th makes me unreasonable. Yet I cannot leave it be, because I still cannot wrap my mind around it. It comes and badgers me when least expected. And still I wonder if the children born today will ever understand this. Just as I never understood my parents in their reminiscences about World War II, will they never understand their own parents’ reminiscences about The Day the Towers Fell?

The rules aren’t new. They’re just new to me. But, just as I must when playing with a cat, I’d best learn these rules if I’m to get on with life.