I was in downtown Washington D.C. twenty years ago today. I was 15 and on a family road trip. I could tell a lot of stories about that day, but the one I remember the most is actually from 9/12 - I came downstairs in my aunt's house to see my mother sitting at the table sobbing over the photos and stories in that day's Washington Post. I took the newspaper away from her, brought her some Kleenex, and gave her a hug. 9/11 will always remind me of the first time I mothered my mother.
My personal grief ritual for this day is to listen to two songs - Where Where You When the World Stopped Turning by Alan Jackson, and Grand Central Station by Mary Chapin Carpenter. MCC did an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR about the writing of that song, the story of a man who is working at the Twin Towers site in the weeks after the collapse and how he feels like he brings the souls of those who died with him to the train station when he leaves every night. I always cry at the last lines of that song - "Tomorrow I'll be back there working on the pile / Going in and coming out single file / Before my job is done there's one more trip I'm making / to Grand Central Station."
Thank you for sharing. Beautifully written. Definitely too young. A mystic in Ireland for-told a big event would happen at the towers and this ended up bringing me on two pilgrimages to Ireland. Very fruitful- somehow God brings good out of evil. Bless you.
I was in downtown Washington D.C. twenty years ago today. I was 15 and on a family road trip. I could tell a lot of stories about that day, but the one I remember the most is actually from 9/12 - I came downstairs in my aunt's house to see my mother sitting at the table sobbing over the photos and stories in that day's Washington Post. I took the newspaper away from her, brought her some Kleenex, and gave her a hug. 9/11 will always remind me of the first time I mothered my mother.
My personal grief ritual for this day is to listen to two songs - Where Where You When the World Stopped Turning by Alan Jackson, and Grand Central Station by Mary Chapin Carpenter. MCC did an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR about the writing of that song, the story of a man who is working at the Twin Towers site in the weeks after the collapse and how he feels like he brings the souls of those who died with him to the train station when he leaves every night. I always cry at the last lines of that song - "Tomorrow I'll be back there working on the pile / Going in and coming out single file / Before my job is done there's one more trip I'm making / to Grand Central Station."
Thank you for sharing. Beautifully written. Definitely too young. A mystic in Ireland for-told a big event would happen at the towers and this ended up bringing me on two pilgrimages to Ireland. Very fruitful- somehow God brings good out of evil. Bless you.
Beautiful, Laura. I remember the day so vividly.