What did we learn from Sep­tem­ber 11?

I learned that noth­ing, whether it is bad or good, lasts for­ever.  After the events of the day, that tru­ism seemed to apply only to good things: sky­scrap­ers, happy kinder­garten, safety, security.

But as the months went by, I learned that the bad bits do not last for­ever, either.  As a lovely Scot­tish writer put it, “Grief is a won­der­ful thing in a way, because after a bit you can put it down, by the side of the road, and walk on.”  I learned to do that, but it was slow-going and with many steps back­ward along the way.  I learned that in many ways, I was made of The Wrong Stuff.  I could not be far­ther from the per­son­al­ity of a hero who runs into a burn­ing build­ing or a mayor who goes to 343 firemen’s funer­als, or Abby the Kinder­garten Teacher who spent seven hours a day with 45 five-year-olds and was still smil­ing at 3 p.m.  I just was not made of The Right Stuff.

I empathized with the edi­to­r­ial writer of the New York Times who mused whether she would rather die smoth­ered in a tun­nel or falling from a bridge.  I wor­ried a great deal about vehi­cles parked in my street with no imme­di­ately iden­ti­fi­able owner.  The whole “if you see some­thing, say some­thing” motto of New York City found a will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor in me, and my local precinct of New York’s Bravest got heartily sick of my phone calls.  I’m sure I was on a “loony neigh­bor” list with the box next to my name firmly ticked.  In ink.

I took a lot of fit­ful naps and became obses­sively famil­iar with the topog­ra­phy of Afghanistan.  I was irri­ta­ble and snap­pish.  I was not inspi­ra­tional or uplift­ing or even one iota optimistic.

But the thing was, life was relent­less.  Cop­ing with Avery’s needs got me up in the morn­ing and kept me going dur­ing the day.  It was impos­si­ble not to get excited when the class­room chicks hatched, and even though there wasn’t a place to sit down, the kinder­garten room was a mag­net for many of us par­ents.  Abby’s unfail­ing, gen­tle smile was always filled with love and patience, for all of us.  We par­ents often felt as much under her wing as the chil­dren did.

And then, in Feb­ru­ary, it hap­pened.  Our beloved PS 234 was given back to us.

The Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Admin­is­tra­tion had occu­pied the school since the evening of Sep­tem­ber 11.  On the school’s web­site there was a cal­en­dar with a smi­ley face stuck to every day the school had been open that year.  It stopped at Sep­tem­ber 10.  Who knows what state the school build­ing was in when the last of those offi­cial boots walked out the door.  We kinder­garten par­ents were not included in what must have been a mas­sive parental effort to make the school wel­com­ing again.

What I do remem­ber is the open week­end before the offi­cial reopen­ing on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 4.  With char­ac­ter­is­tic sen­si­tiv­ity, the school’s admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply opened the doors, all week­end, and let us all re-acquaint our­selves with the school in our own time, in our own ways.  All Avery wanted to do was run around “the yard,” the seem­ingly unap­peal­ing, sim­ple con­crete open area which had been the scene of such panic and chaos months before.  In the months and years ahead, “the yard” would be the scene instead of hours of chalk-drawing, whis­pered con­fi­dences, kick­ball and even a lit­tle child­hood romance…  Around and around she ran, exor­cis­ing ghosts.

There were huge trucks parked out­side the front door of the school, loaded with fresh school sup­plies, juice boxes, prob­a­bly even a ham­ster or two.  It was very, very excit­ing, and also heart­break­ing in a way.  Start­ing over is always a chal­lenge, and we had started over so many times that year.

We went inside and for some rea­son were the only peo­ple there.  The soli­tude and silence were just what we needed to absorb the mem­o­ries of the past, to rec­on­cile the hope and inno­cence of Sep­tem­ber 10 with the expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, the adjust­ments, tears, losses and gains of the inter­ven­ing five months.  The quiet hall­ways were lined, poet­i­cally, touch­ingly, with the dozens of Amer­i­can flags made of every mate­r­ial you can imag­ine, from coun­tries all over the world, sent to us to cheer us up on arrival.  “Wel­come home!” they said in many lan­guages.  “You’ve got your school back!  Hip hip  hooray!”

Avery stood gaz­ing up at one of the dozens of quilts that had been sent to us, read­ing the heart­felt, empa­thetic mes­sages from chil­dren we would never meet.  “I know it’s been hard for you, but it will get bet­ter.”  “The whole world is think­ing of you.”  “We had a hur­ri­cane in our town once and three peo­ple died, so I know how you feel.”

It was stun­ning and hum­bling to think of all the effort, all over the world, that strangers had made to cre­ate gifts for our chil­dren (and for us), to hang in our school.  I thought of all the school­teach­ers who felt help­less, imag­in­ing what they would do if their school were taken from them, and it must have felt so good to be able to do some­thing, to give us some­thing.  They were such inter­est­ing dona­tions: not com­mer­cial or mon­e­tary or valu­able.  They were sim­ply out­pour­ings of sym­pa­thy, and we needed them.

Of course there was one tan­gi­ble gift that became part of Avery’s life and has fol­lowed her every­where.  Abby Bear.

Abby Bear — dozens of Abby Bears — were sent to us by a school in Alabama, and dis­trib­uted to all the kinder­gart­ners.  She has moved with us across an ocean, and to three Lon­don homes.  Some­thing tells me she’ll be mak­ing the trip to uni­ver­sity in four years’ time.

On our way home from the quiet tour of our school, I asked Avery, “What do you remem­ber from that day, Sep­tem­ber 11?  Do you remem­ber any­thing special?”

Long pause.

“Well, I remem­ber that I was the last one in through the red door.  And then, there was a very loud noise, and all the pigeons flew in the same direction.”

So we went back.  That Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, a cold and bit­ter day, there were many odd things to notice.  Cheer­lead­ers!  A march­ing band from the local high school!  Hun­dreds of reporters, among them a lovely writer from Peo­ple Mag­a­zine who included us in his story.  The chan­cel­lor or com­mis­sioner or what­ever he is called, of Edu­ca­tion turned up, the pres­i­dent of the PTA at whom I had so unhelp­fully cursed on Sep­tem­ber 11, made a speech.  Finally our beloved Anna Switzer, the most for­mi­da­ble and yet warm-hearted prin­ci­pal any school will ever know, wel­comed us.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing any­one said because I was too busy try­ing not to cry.  Unsuc­cess­fully.  Every­thing to do with Avery always makes me want to cry, but it was a bit more so that day even than usual.  I looked at Anna Switzer and won­dered how she had sur­vived the last five months: the worry, the pres­sure, the con­tro­versy over the air qual­ity — should we or should we not return? — on top of the usual prob­lems any school has, like never enough money for any­thing.  Anna was inde­fati­ga­ble.  When she dis­cov­ered that Avery, a lowly kinder­gart­ner, used hand­ker­chiefs instead of tis­sues, she gave her one.  “I col­lect them,” she explained.  Avery has it still.  Per­haps it was in her pocket that day.

Through­out the speeches, I felt myself dis­in­te­grat­ing a bit inside.  Here was the day we had all been wait­ing for!  Why wasn’t I com­pletely happy?  I think there was a lot of anger under­neath my gen­eral worry and fear, anger that made it hard to get to the cel­e­bra­tory bit.  How mon­strous it was that we should be forced into this sit­u­a­tion at all.  How unac­cept­able that we should have to stand there, feel­ing tear­ful and grate­ful and thank­ful and SPE­CIAL.  Why should John have to spell out “PS 234″ in raisin toast for Avery’s birth­day?  I was sud­denly in the mood to throw a bowl of cereal at her in the morn­ing and get back to being casual, and ordinary.

But we got through the cer­e­mony.  Abby gath­ered up her charges, in all their human vari­ety and small stature.  That kinder­garten class was her first ever job.

Finally they went into the school, through the red door.  Avery was gone.  School was open.  And noth­ing bad happened.

We sol­diered on.  I dis­cov­ered what it was like to be part of the PS 234 com­mu­nity.  The PTA — a much more bossy and vocal group than our Eng­lish school’s “Par­ents Guild” — ran the place.  We raised tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­vide our school with a library, where I worked from Day One, labelling each and every book with a bar­code so the col­lec­tion could be com­put­er­ized, for the first time.  This was the view from the win­dow of the library.

Only if you had been there before Sep­tem­ber 11 would you know that you shouldn’t be able to see any sky from this win­dow.  There should be only the build­ings, as far, really, as the eye could see.  These trail­ers and trucks down below housed emer­gency work­ers well into the sum­mer that year.

Dur­ing the days I spent bar­cod­ing books, there were sur­real moments.  An announce­ment over the loud­speaker.  “The kinder­garten trip to Staten Island has been can­celled due to a bomb threat at the Statue of Lib­erty.  Pickup at nor­mal time today.”  There was Laura Bush’s visit to read to the chil­dren, a visit com­plete with escorts from the National Guard, car­ry­ing rifles and auto­matic weapons into our school.

But in gen­eral, some­thing like nor­mal life pre­vailed.  We held the annual Spring Auc­tion which raised money for the art and music depart­ments.  I became the head of the Book Sale which took place every semes­ter in the very hall­way where we all had stood, won­der­ing what to do, on Sep­tem­ber 11.  In that same hall­way, I read with chil­dren who were hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up.  (Actu­ally mostly what I did was lis­ten to child­ish chat­ter as the kids would much rather gos­sip than read aloud.)  I was class mother, so I went on count­less school trips to arbore­tums, zoos, muse­ums.  Grad­u­ally our mem­o­ries of the school as a place of hor­ror and uncer­tainty became replaced with cozy, messy, shouty mem­o­ries of kids with sticky hands.  Avery became used to see­ing me at school, in school, nearly every day.  It was the only way I could think of to cope.  It was a bit of a cheat really: I was in the­ory “leav­ing her at school,” because I left her in the school­yard and kissed her good­bye.  But I was there.

One day John told me some­thing he hadn’t wanted to tell me before.  He had been invited to a finan­cial infor­ma­tion ser­vices break­fast at “Win­dows on the World,” the restau­rant at the top of the World Trade Cen­ter, on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11.  He had decided he was too busy to go.  Every­one there died.

These adjust­ments and expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries had unex­pected effects on me, per­haps on all of us.  I had my first and only ever bor­der­line sui­ci­dal thoughts.  Not that I really wanted to be dead, but some­times the over­whelm­ing pre­cious­ness of being alive, and the lin­ger­ing fear of how much we all had to lose, over­whelmed me.  I imag­ined, briefly, how much eas­ier it would be just to throw it all away myself, take the bull by the horns, just give in, give up.  At times like that I decided to think it was a nor­mal stage of griev­ing, and I retreated under a duvet with a pile of cats, an old famil­iar video on the tele­vi­sion, and waited out the day until it was time to pick Avery up at school.  See­ing her again always made the unspeak­able fears retreat, for a time.

Sum­mer came.  We all went back to play­ing in the park across the street from the school, where one scary evening in win­ter a team in Haz­mat suits had come to vac­uum up the sand­box.  That’s how crazy life was in the months after we went back to school.  Some city offi­cial would wake up in the mid­dle of the night and say to him­self, “Oh my God!  That sand­box!  There could be ANY­THING in it.  Quick, get rid of it.  Maybe no one will notice us there.”  And we’d wake up to a brand­new, cleanly filled sand­box for the first time in liv­ing mem­ory, when for sure neigh­bor­hood chil­dren had been squat­ting there and doing who knows what for years.

That same offi­cial, respond­ing to the pleas of still-upset par­ents, installed some sort of magic air-measuring bal­loon at the top of the school­yard.  Every once in awhile, there would be no “yard,” what we called “recess,” because some num­ber mea­sur­ing some­thing had been too high, that morn­ing.  Now, in hind­sight, I think so many of these “offi­cial” mea­sure­ments and actions were a sort of “pay no atten­tion to the man behind the cur­tain,” as we all vaguely hoped some Wiz­ard was look­ing after us.

There were, once again, birth­day par­ties in the park, how­ever.  Ice cream and cake wait for no man.

On the last day of school that year, the hugs and kisses were fer­vent.  We said good­bye to Abby who with her per­sonal brand of emo­tional glue had held us all together, indi­vid­u­ally and as a group, since Sep­tem­ber 11.  The new school year would be a fresh start, another “first day of school.”

Every year we observe the anniver­sary, in small ways.  We watch the names being read on tele­vi­sion.  Alyssa called me the first year.  “They were on the Cs, and I had to go to the gro­cery.  When I got back, they were only on the Ms.”  Every year I speak in an email to Jen, the mother I stood with on the cor­ner when the plane went over.  I speak to Kath­leen, Cici’s mom, with whom I shared the whole ter­ri­ble day.  Every year I speak to my friend at Can­tor Fitzger­ald, a lit­tle about Sep­tem­ber 11, a lit­tle about art.  Here in Eng­land we go to the beau­ti­ful memo­r­ial to the 67 British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square where the Amer­i­can Embassy looms.

Every year we ask Avery what she remem­bers and some­where along the line, the mem­o­ries (as few as they were) went from real mem­o­ries to only sto­ries being told about what she remem­bers being told she remembers.

This spring, out of the blue, the phone rang here in Lon­don as we were still unpack­ing boxes from our lat­est move.  “Hi, this is Doug, from that Cana­dian news­pa­per who inter­viewed you and Avery in Novem­ber, after Sep­tem­ber 11.  Do you remem­ber?  You showed me the hat you bought for Avery from the Afghan store in New York, dur­ing the first part of the war.  Do you remember?”

Sud­denly I did.  I told him I’d call him back, scram­bled to my feet, ran up to Avery’s room at the top of the house, rooted through her closet, and finally found it.

I called him back and he asked many ques­tions about how we had coped in the years since that day.  Avery over­heard my half of the con­ver­sa­tion and came into the room after I had hung up.  “Do you guys real­ize that I know less about Sep­tem­ber 11 than any­one else my age?  I was the only one who was there, and I don’t know any­thing about it!  It’s prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing that will ever hap­pen in my life, and I was left out of the whole thing.”

(My friend Eliz­a­beth smiled wisely when I told her this story.  “We hope it’s not the more inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing what will ever hap­pen to her.”  I smiled more grimly and said, “Maybe we don’t.  Maybe that’s as inter­est­ing as it needs to get.”)

“You were four years old!” I said, imme­di­ately defen­sive.  “You didn’t have any busi­ness know­ing any­thing about it.  You were a baby!”

We talked about the day, what had hap­pened to her.  “I remem­ber the school was REALLY crowded!”  And of course she remem­bers Abby.

“Go ahead and find out any­thing you like,” we said finally.  Avery is an invet­er­ate news house, addicted to the BBC and vocif­er­ously well-informed about all cur­rent events, much more so than I.

We will never know if it was the right thing to do, to pro­tect and shel­ter her.  Chil­dren are resilient, every­one always tells me.  Peo­ple in gen­eral are resilient.  One thing I cer­tainly learned from Sep­tem­ber 11 and the days and months and years after­ward is a sort of mod­i­fied Niet­zsche tru­ism: “That which does not kill you does not nec­es­sar­ily make you stronger, but you are still alive.  Get on with it.”

We con­tinue to try.  On this anniver­sary my great­est hope is to remem­ber, then put the mem­o­ries down by the side of the road, and walk on.

(click here to read of what hap­pened to us on the day of the events)

On Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001, we got up early in our Tribeca apart­ment because it was the first day — only a half day, but still, the first day — of kinder­garten for Avery.

I pre­tended to be as excited as she and John were, as she bur­bled on about finally being in “real school,” about her new shoes, about finally, the next day, stay­ing in school to eat her lunch.

I, on the other hand, had spent the entire sum­mer think­ing I was dying of some­thing.  Not sure what, but sure some­thing was dras­ti­cally wrong with me, I haunted doc­tors.  I went to my GP sev­eral times, who promised me, “You’re fine, and even if you’re not, what­ever it is, we’ll fix it.”  From there I saw a gas­troen­terol­o­gist, an endocri­nol­o­gist and was about to see a neu­rol­o­gist when some­thing eye-opening hap­pened to me.  I picked up Avery at sum­mer camp one after­noon, and real­ized that all my symp­toms– a per­va­sive stomach-ache, slight tremor in my hands, rapid heart­beat– dis­ap­peared as soon as I had her hand in mine.  I went home, tore up the reminder for my appoint­ment with the neu­rol­o­gist, and set myself to the task of learn­ing to say good­bye to my lit­tle girl, to leave her at school like all other par­ents leave chil­dren at school.  I was suf­fer­ing from pre-separation anx­i­ety, not a brain tumor.

That first half-day of school I felt like the world was com­ing to an end.  Since she was a baby, Avery had gone to “preschool,” a sweet lit­tle Montes­sori morn­ing activ­ity with her best friends Cici and Annabelle, try­ing to become social­ized, to let other peo­ple talk, to share, all dif­fi­cult tasks for an adored only child both of whose par­ents turned instantly toward her the moment she opened her mouth.  I knew that all-day real school would be even bet­ter for her.  She had never looked back for me when I left her at preschool, only turn­ing res­olutely toward her real life, hap­pily leav­ing me behind.  I was the one with the problem.

John and I took her to school, or rather she took her­self, that first half-day of kinder­garten, bounc­ing down the side­walk with Cici, who lived in the same build­ing with us.  They could not have been more excited.  She was so adorable, so pure and price­less, that we took lots of pho­tographs.  Here she is out­side the gate, wear­ing the spe­cial new out­fit she had planned for days.  Espe­cially the beret.

And the red shoes, which made lit­tle clicky sounds on the side­walk as she skipped along.

Into the school she went.  I spent the morn­ing try­ing to think of what I was going to do with my year, what every par­ent thinks of as the year from Sep­tem­ber to June.  I had quit my teach­ing jobs the last year in order to write a book, and it was nearly fin­ished, only wait­ing for muse­ums to give per­mis­sion to use their images.  It would keep me busy.

The half-day ended and I went to pick her up in the lit­tle con­crete school­yard sur­rounded by the wrought-iron orna­men­tal fence, a fix­ture in our neigh­bor­hood.  It was a cov­eted school, that rare thing: a New York pub­lic school that was safe, sup­ported by par­ents, cozy and suc­cess­ful.  I was sur­rounded by other moth­ers, by fathers and nan­nies, wait­ing for the chil­dren.  The sky was dark with heavy clouds, the air so humid it pressed against our faces like a wet wash­cloth, tiny drops of rain began to sprin­kle onto our heads.  Sud­denly there was a CRACK, a shock­ing CRASH.  We all jumped a mile high, then looked sheep­ishly at each other, laugh­ing at our silly panic, as the heav­ens opened and the after­noon dis­solved into a thunderstorm.

At last the doors opened: the big front door to the school where the older chil­dren came out, and the lit­tle red door onto the school­yard where the lit­tle ones were shep­herded out by their lov­ing teach­ers.  And there she was.  “I LOVE Abby!  She is the nicest teacher!  And we col­ored, and we’re going to be study­ing chicks!  And how they turn into chick­ens!”  Avery’s words tum­bled over each other as I picked her up, a feel­ing of deep relief show­er­ing me, low­er­ing my blood pres­sure, mak­ing me sigh with hap­pi­ness.  Every­thing was going to be FINE.  Why had I dreaded school so much?  She had had a won­der­ful morning.

She was so earnest, so con­cerned about fit­ting in and doing the right things.

That night the clouds rolled out, the tem­per­a­ture dropped to a per­fect Sep­tem­ber nip.  The next morn­ing, the first full day of school, dawned famously blue and per­fect.  I don’t have to describe it because it is its own cat­e­gory of day now, “a Sep­tem­ber 11 kind of day.”  It was the sec­ond day, so no more fancy clothes.  She put on a yel­low t-shirt and a lit­tle full skirt with appliqued pink and orange fluffy flow­ers on it.  John didn’t come with us.  Hav­ing his own life to attend to, he headed to work in Times Square and I headed down the three blocks between our apart­ment and the school, handed her her lunch­box (Hello Kitty), gave her a hug and kiss.  “See you at 3 o’clock!” I said, and watched her cavort­ing in the school­yard with the chil­dren who were already her friends.  We were early.  It was just after 8:30 a.m.

I caught up with a mother I rec­og­nized as hav­ing a lit­tle girl in kinder­garten, and we walked together uptown, she push­ing her lit­tle boy in a stroller.  “Jen, are you at all ner­vous or upset at Tova’s going to school all day?” I asked, feel­ing fool­ish but as usual want­ing to see if some­one else shared my experience.

“Are you kid­ding, with this lit­tle guy to enter­tain all day?  I’m thrilled,” she said.  We went on chatting.

“What?  What did you say?” I shouted.

“I can’t hear you either,” she said, and as one per­son we looked up into the sky.  As we stood there, on the cor­ner of Duane and Green­wich, the school a block and a half away, a plane approached overhead.

“Are planes allowed to fly that low in Man­hat­tan?” I shouted.

“No!  And he’s headed straight ahead!  How can he not see where he’s going?”

“He still has time to turn!” I shouted, as I strained to see what was to the right of what we now refer to as “the North Tower” or “Build­ing Num­ber 1″ but what in those days was known by us locals sim­ply as “the World Trade Cen­ter.”  We hardly thought about there being two buildings.

“He’s not turn­ing! Oh my God!”

And then I expe­ri­enced a trick of per­cep­tion that I thought about only later.  First, time slowed down as I watched the air­plane sim­ply park itself into the build­ing, high above our heads.  In my per­cep­tion of that moment, there was no sound.  Despite the enor­mous, over­whelm­ing, ear-crushing explo­sion that was occur­ring before me, in my world, every­thing was silent.  The air­plane sim­ply silently parked itself into the side of the build­ing.  And then there were flames.

“The school!” Jen and I screamed together.  As we looked toward the school, the sev­eral city blocks that sep­a­rated it from the World Trade Cen­ter tele­scoped into noth­ing­ness.  There was just the shower of flames, and directly below, our school.

We ran, she awk­wardly pulling and push­ing the stroller.  “Oh my God, Oh my God,” we panted over and over.  We reached the school; the school­yard with its red door was empty, the gate locked.  We went to the big kids’ front door.  Par­ents were shout­ing and push­ing.  The pres­i­dent of the PTA, also on his first full day of school, blocked the entrance.  “Now hold on, the fire depart­ment is com­ing.  Every­thing will be taken care of.  The safest place for your chil­dren is in this school building.”

“Get the f***k out of my way, I need my daugh­ter,” I said qui­etly, and he just as qui­etly stepped aside.  We rushed inside, look­ing for our chil­dren in a build­ing we weren’t very famil­iar with, had vis­ited only a cou­ple of times.  “Where are the kinder­garten rooms?” I asked some poor teacher who looked com­pletely shell-shocked.  “Avery is right in there,” she said imme­di­ately, although I didn’t rec­og­nize her.  I went in.  There were other par­ents there and a fran­tic rush to find our children.

Then a real­iza­tion swept me.  I was the adult.  I was the par­ent.  I was not with peers with whom I could share my fear.  I was the one who had to look in con­trol, calm and adult.  It was the first and pos­si­bly only truly ratio­nal thought I ever had, dur­ing the events of Sep­tem­ber 11.

“Hi, Avery, there’s been an acci­dent out­side and we’re going home.  Where’s Cici?  She can come with us,” and then there was Cici’s father John, so we grabbed the girls and their lunch­boxes and headed down­stairs to the exit.  Once in the round brick rotunda that held the wel­come desk, how­ever, we felt wracked with inde­ci­sion, so many par­ents and chil­dren, crowd­ing the small space.  “Should we leave?  Or would it just be bet­ter to leave things nor­mal?” we all won­dered aloud in var­i­ous ways.  Then came a ter­ri­ble sound, both deaf­en­ing and eerily muf­fled by the round brick room in which we crowded.  “What the hell…?”  We all looked at each other with an inde­scrib­able com­bi­na­tion of fear, dread, unknow­ing, and yet know­ing.  The sec­ond build­ing had been hit, by what, we did not know.

“We’re get­ting out of here,” I said and I car­ried Avery out.  Instantly I real­ized I needed to walk a cer­tain way, to hold her head against my shoul­der a cer­tain way so that she could not see what­ever was hap­pen­ing behind the school, in those build­ings four blocks away.  We emerged into the per­fect blue-sky day to find par­ents fran­ti­cally shak­ing cell­phones which no longer worked (I did not even have a cell phone in those days), par­ents cry­ing, hold­ing onto each other, par­ents vom­it­ing into the curbs.  I walked as quickly as I could toward home, three blocks away, uptown, away from the World Trade Center.

We arrived at home in silence, Avery some­how hav­ing divined not to ask ques­tions.  It was the first of the many moments after that day that she showed the sen­si­tiv­ity and matu­rity that have become the hall­marks of her personality.

We sat, Cici’s mother Kath­leen and I, on the bench inside our apart­ment, hold­ing the girls’ lunch­boxes, then putting them down, then hold­ing each other’s hands.  There was noth­ing to say.  The girls them­selves ran off to play, a bit con­fused as to the short­ened school day, but happy to be together.

Finally I said, “Do you remem­ber that time at din­ner once, when we all won­dered where the top of the spire of the build­ing would land, if it crashed down sideways?”

“Yes.”

“And we found out it would crash right through our bed­room windows.”

“Yes.”

The ele­va­tor opened into our apart­ment and there was John, pant­ing, sweat­ing.  “I saw the sec­ond plane go in from Times Square, and got a cab down to 14th Street, then ran home from there.”  It was about 40 blocks.  Kathleen’s hus­band John arrived and the two men went up to the building’s roof, while Kath­leen and I took the girls up to her apart­ment, the sixth and top floor of our build­ing, and sat silently together.  Sud­denly John and John shouted from the roof, “Oh my God, the build­ing is going.  We’re get­ting out of here.”  We grabbed the chil­dren — Cici and Avery and Cici’s lit­tle brother Noah — and rode down together in the ele­va­tor, emerg­ing into the ridicu­lous sun­shine to head uptown as fast as we rea­son­ably could.  A young lady emerged from nowhere, hold­ing a baby.  “I came out of our build­ing hold­ing the baby and now they won’t let me back in!  I need his food, and dia­pers!  I have no money, no house keys, noth­ing!”  “Come with us,” we all said, and scooped them up.

We walked, walked, walked until we came to Cici’s father’s office build­ing on Canal Street, and rode up in the ele­va­tor to his news­pa­per offices, which were teem­ing with reporters, this sort of thing being their rai­son d’etre, how­ever hor­ri­fy­ing at the time.  Every­one was on com­put­ers, on the phone, shout­ing, ges­tic­u­lat­ing.  We came in hold­ing the kids and headed toward an empty con­fer­ence room, uncon­sciously, I think, look­ing for a room in the cen­ter of the build­ing, not at the perime­ters.  The room was dec­o­rated with a pho­to­graph of the 1930s Man­hat­tan sky­line, dom­i­nated by the Empire State Build­ing, look­ing down to a low, flat down­town.  “We’re back there, now, if the sec­ond build­ing falls down,” Kath­leen said.

And it did.  John was out­side in the dust, hav­ing begged me to let him go down to the site and help.  I shouted, “No!  Your place is here with us!”  I sim­ply could not con­tem­plate his going down to the site.  I hadn’t even begun to worry about the air qual­ity, what he would breathe in if he went.  It just seemed unbear­ably ten­u­ous and unknown to let him go.  So he didn’t.  To this day, every anniver­sary, he expresses his doubts about stay­ing with us, about not help­ing.  But I could not let him go down there.  So he was out buy­ing dia­pers and baby for­mula for the strange baby and lady in our midst, when the sec­ond build­ing fell.

I remem­ber stick­ing my head out the win­dow to look at the smol­der­ing, smok­ing sky­scraper one moment.  The next moment when I looked, it sim­ply wasn’t there any­more.  It sounds ridicu­lously sim­plis­tic to say it that way, but that was how the day pro­gressed.  Build­ings sim­ply disappeared.

Then it was a blur, the rest of the day, imag­in­ing that the sky was full of other plane-weapons, imag­in­ing other tar­gets.  We heard there were sev­en­teen miss­ing planes, twenty miss­ing planes.  No one knew what to believe.  The chil­dren played nearby, obliv­i­ous.  I thought, “What were we think­ing, hav­ing a child in this world?  How dared we bring an inno­cent baby into this world.”  Our thoughts and fears turned to the most basic a per­son can have.  Months later, John and I took some sort of online sur­vey about Post-Traumatic Stress Dis­or­der, then not really a syn­drome com­mon enough to have an acronym, PTSD.  One ques­tion was, “Did you at any time dur­ing your expe­ri­ence fear for your life?”  It seemed unbe­liev­able that such ordi­nary, unre­mark­able peo­ple as we, on a blue-sky day in Tribeca, could answer, “Yes.”

John suc­cess­fully bat­tled his way down to our apart­ment that after­noon, past the guards, the police and the mil­i­tary, and let him­self in to imme­di­ately hear the buzzer, over and over.  There were police­ment and fire­men who had sur­vived, des­per­ately seek­ing water, a bath­room, a moment of peace.  My mother remem­bers our telling her that one fire­man took a long drink of water, looked around our untouched apart­ment and said, “Bam­boo.  I’ve always wanted to do a floor in bam­boo… I can’t believe I’m talk­ing about your floor, on a day like today.”  “We have to try to talk about things like that,” John assured him.  “That’s life.”

John came back up to get us on Canal Street and we all came home, crowd­ing into our apart­ment because, being me, there was food.  Every­one in the build­ing came, all five floors of us, plus the Lady and the Baby, as I think of them now.  And at some point in the evening, her hus­band appeared in the ele­va­tor, hav­ing walked all the way from LaGuardia air­port where he was stranded.  They went home.  The rest of us stayed, eat­ing meat­loaf, ribs, cream of some­thing soup, what­ever we had in the fridge.  And on that night, around our din­ing table, was born my most pow­er­ful amulet against the over­whelm­ing fear, the exis­ten­tial fear, that had been cre­ated that day.  What­ever hap­pened, it would be bet­ter if “every­one” were together.  From then on, I think, I’ve felt bet­ter the more peo­ple were gath­ered around my table.

That night no one, none of the adults, could sleep.  Because we had not let her see what was hap­pen­ing behind her school, because inter­mit­tently for var­i­ous power rea­sons we had no tele­vi­sion or com­puter (and for some time after that, we delib­er­ately kept her away from the tele­vi­sion), Avery was com­pletely shel­tered from what was occur­ring out­side her door.  Our street was the first above the dis­as­ter that retained elec­tric power.  And so we stayed, through the unspeak­able night of the 11th.  I moved from our bed­room to the liv­ing room where I lay on the sofa, con­tem­plat­ing the unfath­omable wound in our beloved city, our cher­ished neigh­bor­hood, the loss of our secu­rity, the loss of our school, the near-loss of my child, as I saw it.

The next day we all tried to live.  I remem­ber speak­ing to my best friend Alyssa on the phone; she was clean­ing out Annabelle’s closet.  Why on earth are you both­er­ing, I thought.  We won’t be alive long enough for you to care.  Later that morn­ing I received an unbe­liev­able tele­phone call.  A dear friend of mine who had worked as art cura­tor for Can­tor Fitzger­ald, whose dead accounted for 25% of those lost,  had been delayed in going to work on Sep­tem­ber 11.  Her alarm didn’t go off.  She was still here, still with us.  Some­how her being saved only fright­ened me more; the ran­dom­ness was almost the worst.  “You won’t believe this,” she told me, “but a totally intact memo from Can­tor just floated into my back­yard.”  She lived in Brooklyn.

The neigh­bor­hood showed the scars.  An empty space where the build­ings had been just blocks from our house.  I described it to Avery as “a big mess you’ll see at the end of the street, but they’ll clean it up.”

Our poor old local McDonald’s.

And boxes of fruit cov­ered in that toxic, memory-and identity-laden dust we could not con­tem­plate, sim­ply had to live with.

I do not do well sleep­less.  By the morn­ing of the 13th it was clear that me sleep­less was not viable, and at the same time, our beloved friends Livia and Jan­ice in New Jer­sey had been beg­ging for us to come.  I called Alyssa, since we did not have a car.

“We are head­ing out to Sea­cau­cus, so pack up those crazy cats and come with us.”

It was the work of a moment to pack the crazy cats up, throw some of Avery’s belong­ings in a suit­case, and head to Alyssa’s, two blocks up.  We squished every­one into her car, and drove toward the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, pass­ing an extra­or­di­nary sight: hun­dreds of peo­ple, just ordi­nary peo­ple, lin­ing the divider between the uptown and down lanes of the West Side High­way.  They faced the lane going down­town, toward the site, and held up hand-lettered signs read­ing “You’re our heroes, FDNY!”  “FIRE­MEN ARE ANGELS” “GOD BLESS THE USA”.

Alyssa’s dys­func­tional dog Sid­ney cow­ered on the floor of the front seat.  We all rode in silence, not look­ing behind us.  Then as we crossed the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, we could not help our­selves.  We turned around.

The black and gray swirling cloud caused by the falling of the two tow­ers, pal­pa­ble on some ter­ri­ble Richter Scale, vis­i­ble from the Hub­ble Space tele­scope, loomed in the dis­tance downtown.

“Where is our city?  Where is our neigh­bor­hood?  What has hap­pened to us?”  We all asked every­thing at the same time.

And at that very moment, every cat in the back of the car chose to behave as if there were a lit­ter­box back there.

“Whew!  Oh my good­ness…” and then Sidney’s snout, too fear­ful to rise above seat level nor­mally, appeared like a lit­tle sub­ma­rine spot­ter.  “What on earth are those cats doing?”  It was a moment of hilar­ity we all needed, to sur­vive.  And yet when our car passed by groups of men play­ing golf in the New Jer­sey sun­shine, I was so angry I could hardly breathe.  How dared they?  Now I won­der if I dreamed that mem­ory.  Was any­one in the tri-state area really play­ing golf on Sep­tem­ber 13?

We arrived at Livia’s and Janice’s house and sim­ply col­lapsed in their arms.  Never had their pris­tine, white, per­fect house in New Jer­sey seemed such a sanc­tu­ary.  We stayed until Sep­tem­ber 15.  I spoke on the tele­phone often with our fam­i­lies in the Mid­west who were wor­ried about us.  Avery rif­fled through Livia’s child­hood clos­ets to find the dolls she always played with there.  We drank far too much Scotch, stayed up until the wee hours of the morn­ing, try­ing to make sense of what had hap­pened.  Livia sat on the edge of my bed the first night, stroking my hand.  “I think our world is ended, Livvie,” I said.  She held me.  “It will come out all right, you know.  It always does.”  After a decent sleep, I felt bet­ter, but the resumed air­plane flights over­head after the sev­eral days’ quiet did not help.  Other peo­ple cel­e­brated the return of planes to the sky as a sign that nor­mal life was return­ing.  After my expe­ri­ence, planes in the sky did not feel nor­mal.  Even now, I have an instinc­tive drawing-back when I hear or see or feel an air­plane over­head.  I am quite cer­tain that that reac­tion will last all my life.

On Sep­tem­ber 15 we went home.  The neigh­bor­hood had pulled together, as we shortly real­ized was just in our neighborhood’s nature.  I will never again live in a place of such human warmth, gen­eros­ity and com­mon love.  We had two Rocco’s: Rocco of our beloved Bazz­ini’s, the ancient nut and cof­fee com­pany on our cor­ner, put up a lovely sign say­ing many sim­ple, reas­sur­ing things, among them, “We will rise above this and emerge stronger and closer than ever.”  Rocco of our beloved “Roc” Restau­rant sim­ply brought his kitchen out to the side­walk and fed us all, fire­men, police­men, news­peo­ple.  Those of us who knew him who lived there in our streets with his restau­rant, paid every­thing we had on us, in thanks for the love and sustenance.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, a week and a day after the events, Avery went back to school.  Her school, our beloved PS 234, had been req­ui­si­tioned by FEMA and was occu­pied not with school­child­ren but with boxes of size 11 boots and fire­coats, clip­boards and rapid-response telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions units of some kind.  We pre­pared Avery for the “new school” which was in fact going to be a very old school, PS 41, already over­crowded and now set to wel­come an extra 50% of stu­dents from the evac­u­ated stu­dents from all over lower Manhattan.

Before we took her to school, I sat Avery down and asked her what she knew about what had hap­pened.  For bet­ter or worse, our joint parental deci­sion had been to keep the tele­vi­sion off, no news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and no dis­cus­sion of what had hap­pened until she was in bed.  But we could not let her go to school with both her old class­mates and dozens of new, strange chil­dren, with no knowl­edge of the events.

Avery, with her char­ac­ter­is­tic intense dig­nity and per­sonal ret­i­cence, even at just four years old, said, “I know the World Trade Cen­ter is gone, because you told me.  What hap­pened to it?”

“A plane flew into it and started a huge fire, and then it col­lapsed.  Now they’re clean­ing it all up before they can build some­thing new there.”

A pause, then Avery said, “But weren’t there TWO buildings?”

“Yes.  And there were two planes.”

Another pause, then she said, frown­ing, “That begins to sound like not an accident.”

“No, it wasn’t an acci­dent.  Some very evil peo­ple who were told to hate our coun­try flew the planes into the build­ings deliberately.”

“Why would any­one hate our country?”

“Because we are very free to do and say what we please, and we are happy and suc­cess­ful.  That makes some peo­ple very angry and some of those peo­ple decided to hurt us.”

“I think it’s just ter­ri­ble,” Avery said with the final­ity of the young.  “I bet some peo­ple died.”

“Yes, some peo­ple did.  But the whole world is sorry for us and most of the peo­ple in the world think our coun­try is very good.  And we must con­cen­trate on that.”

If I had been anx­ious about drop­ping her off at school 8 days before, my anx­i­ety level was now at a com­pletely unliv­able level.  I had the crazy idea that the ter­ror­ists has tar­geted our neigh­bor­hood, pos­si­bly our school, and the World Trade Cen­ter was only a con­ve­nient place to park the air­planes.  What if they fol­lowed us to the new school?  As we waited out­side to let the chil­dren in, I felt a fear inside me that I sim­ply could not believe was real.  We had dressed Avery in her Fourth of July dress, too small but still sweet.  It had a small Amer­i­can flag smocked in the front.

She seemed far too small and vul­ner­a­ble to be left alone at yet another school.

Her hair rib­bons were red, white and blue check.

It seemed unbe­liev­able to me that I was meant to leave her there, a block from the hos­pi­tal where the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies had expected to find their wounded loved ones and had left end­less row upon row of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion posters.

We walked our chil­dren into the impos­si­bly crowded school with har­ried teach­ers run­ning to and fro.  Avery seemed fine about being there, and I was at least mature enough to real­ize that what­ever prob­lems there were about leav­ing her there were mine, not hers, so John went to work and I left the class­room, wan­dered out into the hall­way.  There I lit­er­ally ran into the school psy­chol­o­gist, Dr Bruce Arnold, whose job had surely become about 1000% per­cent more dif­fi­cult than he had expected on Sep­tem­ber 10.  “I think there’s some­thing wrong with me, Dr Arnold,” I said, try­ing unsuc­cess­fully not to begin cry­ing.  “I really don’t want to leave her here.”

“There isn’t any­thing wrong with you that isn’t wrong with all of us,” he said.  “And you don’t have to leave.  Stay as long as you like.”

In the end I sim­ply sat in the school cafe­te­ria with other par­ents who didn’t feel like leav­ing, and John told me later that he got as far as the front steps of the school and then sat down and cried.  It was very hard work being “normal.”

We strug­gled through the days being “nor­mal” for Avery, cook­ing and eat­ing and chat­ting and tak­ing her to dance class.  Our school was moved once more, in Octo­ber, to share a sweet — but tiny — school called St Bernard’s in the West Vil­lage, where at least instead of 75 chil­dren per class there were 45.  Yet another “first day of school.”  They began to seem end­less and I felt flat­tened by the pres­sure to get past the secu­rity cor­dons that iso­lated down­town, to get Avery uptown in time for school to begin, try to fill my day, then get uptown to bring her home.  The school put up a tem­po­rary wel­come “label” for us, and the beloved bronze frog that used to sit at the front door of the real PS 234 came with us, for the duration.

Often Kath­leen, Cici’s mother, and I walked home together in the morn­ings, dis­cov­er­ing that we felt much the same: reluc­tant to go down into the sub­way, but unwill­ing NOT to go down into the sub­way, wor­ried about the air we were breath­ing at home but unwill­ing to join the mil­i­tant group of par­ents who were cer­tain we were all sign­ing our death war­rants by stay­ing downtown.

Oh, those ter­ri­ble end­less meet­ings in the dark cafe­te­ria at St Bernard’s, lis­ten­ing to per­fectly nor­mal peo­ple turn loopy and hos­tile, accus­ing other par­ents of being crim­i­nally neg­li­gent for even THINK­ING we would ever return to PS 234 and its toxic air.  And yet these same par­ents picked up their kids every day at St Bernard’s and went home to their apart­ments just as close to the site as the school was.  No one was ratio­nal.  We all seemed to find our own ways both to be crazy, and to cope.  Ish.

The anthrax threats came.  We toyed with the idea of stock­pil­ing things: antibi­otics, duct tape, water.  It all seemed so ludi­crous, so rash and ran­dom and life-threateningly silly that in the end we did noth­ing.  And because life goes on, Avery’s Novem­ber birth­day came and both our sets of par­ents came too, to sup­port New York and us, to get in an air­plane and defy fear.

Avery was in her ele­ment, sur­rounded by the girls she had played with since she was born, con­fi­dent and seem­ingly untouched by any­thing that had hap­pened to her.

There were bal­loons, car­ried home as always from the Bal­loon Saloon by John’s dad, only this time just buy­ing bal­loons was tan­ta­mount to a polit­i­cal act.  “Thank you SO MUCH for com­ing and buy­ing your bal­loons again this year.  We are really strug­gling here,” said the plump and funny owner of the shop.  Every­thing we bought, we bought down­town, try­ing to save our neighborhood.

Rocco came, bear­ing a lit­tle fuch­sia beaded purse for Avery.  Rocco who had been so wise, one after­noon as I stood on the cor­ner where his restau­rant was, look­ing down at the school, past the FEMA emer­gency bound­ary tape.  He put his arm around me and said firmly, “You aren’t doing any­one any good stand­ing here feel­ing sad, Kris­ten.  It will all turn out all right.  Go home.  Go home and be a mommy.”

We began to recover, bit by bit.  I cried every day, at some point in the day, or at many points in the day, for months.  Every­thing seemed, as one of my favorite authors once wrote, “like the last train leav­ing the sta­tion.”  Every morn­ing when I dropped Avery off at school, I imag­ined never see­ing her again, expected never to see her again, and every after­noon at pickup I felt my life had been saved.  The most last­ing legacy of Sep­tem­ber 11 for me is that a bit of this feel­ing has lin­gered to this day; say­ing good­bye to my daugh­ter and say­ing hello again will always feel apoc­a­lyp­tic to me.

While it’s all well and good to live each day as if it could be your last, it’s exhaust­ing.  It’s not nor­mal.  Human life depends on a cer­tain casu­al­ness of spirit, some­times, and that ele­ment of our lives was miss­ing for a very long time, after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.  For me, it would require going back to PS 234 to become nor­mal again…

And we did.  Fol­low us here.

There is noth­ing quite like a day of inter­na­tional travel — includ­ing a mind-numbing five-hour lay­over in Detroit — to turn even the most social per­son on earth (me) into a mis­an­thropic wretch, mum­bling obscen­i­ties under my breath at the frac­tious tod­dlers, quib­bling cou­ples, teenagers who walk over my toes as they text while lis­ten­ing to their iPods… And those are the nice people!

But now I am set­tled into a sticky Nau­gahyde booth at the “Online C@fe” with inter­net ser­vice for the first time in five days, plus a place to plug in my phone.  I pre­dict a shoul­der mas­sage and a plate of excel­lent local Lake Michi­gan sushi, fol­lowed by a thrilling teeth-brushing ses­sion with run­ning water — amaz­ing! -  before I board my plane to London.

Our last few days at Red Gate Farm were not the lazy, self-indulgent time I pic­tured when we waved good­bye to our last vis­i­tors and set­tled in for the end of our sum­mer hol­i­day.  I had not counted on Irene.

As of the wee hours of Sat­ur­day night, we have been with­out power, and as annoy­ing as that was, worse for me was the no-water part of hav­ing absolutely fab­u­lous well-water.  No elec­tric­ity, no pump, all that deli­cious water stays right where it is, underground.

Luck­ily we thought ahead.  I heeded the words of the sweet lit­tle teenage check­out girl at my super­mar­ket, who upbraided the cus­tomer before me for stock­ing up on bot­tled water.  “The hur­ri­cane hasn’t come yet!  You still have run­ning water!  Fill up every con­tainer in your house, start­ing with your bath­tubs.”  I came straight home and John and I got to work fill­ing Nonna’s bath­tub, the drinks tubs from my mother’s birth­day party, sev­eral stock­pots and an empty kitty lit­ter tub.  We felt a lit­tle silly, as if we were over­re­act­ing like all the other peo­ple who had spent 14 straight hours watch­ing the Weather Channel.

Not.

Thank good­ness we did!  Because while I had also over-prepared in buy­ing tons of food, wor­ry­ing that the stores would stay closed for­ever, the real issue came with the loss of power.  With no refrig­er­a­tor, the worry of how to keep food cold was far more press­ing than hav­ing enough to eat.  I learned another impor­tant les­son: ICE.  Some­thing told me to buy a huge bag of it, on the the­ory that it would keep my fridge cold for a lit­tle bit longer than if we didn’t have any, and that 8-pound bag stayed frozen, if a bit drippy, for the dura­tion, five whole days.  The vichys­soise, the many cheeses with­out which I did not feel I could sur­vive a nat­ural dis­as­ter, the beef fil­lets.  “This will be a gourmet apoc­alpyse, damn it!” Avery said.  Thank good­ness she’d had her “Job Cre­ator” ice cream fix the night before.

How I have learned not to take fresh water for granted.  Five days was not long enough to cure me of the life­long habit of turn­ing on the tap.  We devel­oped a sort of triage sys­tem for water needs, like in the Lit­tle House on the Prairie books when every Sat­ur­day night, the mother gets the clean tub of bath water, then the father, then the old­est child, down to the lit­tlest child.  Our ver­sion of this was that I started with a stock­pot full of fresh water to boil for pasta or pota­toes, then in went the corn on the cob, then I scooped out the food and strained the water into another stock­pot for wash­ing the dishes, then poured it into toi­let tanks!  Com­pletely crazy.  But what on earth is our world doing pour­ing clean, san­i­tized water into toi­let tanks, any­way?  I will try not to become an envi­ron­men­tal crank over this experience.

Our last nor­mal moment was a trip to Pen­zeys for me for Fox Point Sea­son­ing, then din­ner with Jill and her fam­ily at the “Japan­ese Steak­house,” which used to be my favorite thing my baby niece Jane could say.  Gor­geous stir-fry and sushi, with the usual accom­pa­ni­ment of poor Molly’s tears at the leap­ing hibachi flames!  Poor girl.  We said our sum­mer good­byes and crawled home in lash­ing rain on the dark­en­ing high­way, a har­bin­ger of things to come.  I awoke in the mid­dle of Sat­ur­day night to deaf­en­ing silence, not a good sign as I sleep with a white-noise maker.  And this is what we saw.

I must tell you that this is what the lawn nor­mally looks like!

In fact, this sec­ond photo was taken just hours after the first.  The water receded fairly effi­ciently in our lit­tle ecosys­tem of ponds and brooks.  Anne’s pond hap­pily gushed, and received an ancient wil­low, bro­ken harm­lessly off in the night.

Half the leaves seemed to have ripped from the trees, turn­ing our sum­mer ter­race into a wet and wild autum­nal one.

Avery and I toured the grounds in the still sprin­kling rain that after­noon, real­iz­ing how we had dodged a bul­let, retain­ing all the ancient and mas­sive trees which dwarf and pro­tect our beloved house.  These branches emit­ted an unearthly scream­ing sound, like a cry­ing baby, as they rubbed together in the lin­ger­ing wind.

Thank good­ness for my gas stove, and for the stock­piled water!  I was able to pro­duce scram­bled eggs and bacon, and with­out a toaster, Avery’s new favorite food: grilled bread with moz­zarella.  I actu­ally did not mind learn­ing to cook by can­dle­light and gas lamp.

Later that after­noon, as the rain tapered off, our neigh­bor Mark came by to tell us about South­ford Falls, a sort of yawn-making local park with a “water­fall” which has never failed to under­whelm any vis­i­tor we took there.  Not on Sunday.

Now THIS would be a spe­cial spot for a roman­tic picnic…

The sheer power of Mother Nature was over­whelm­ingly present.  Any­one who fell in would die, cer­tainly.  Hardly the dull pub­lic attrac­tion of other summers.

By Mon­day after­noon, the vaguely pio­neer spirit of our electricity-, water-less lives had waned.  We suc­cumbed and went to Star­bucks to join the rest of our town for free inter­net access!  It turned out that 74% of our lit­tle town was with­out power, and most of them were sip­ping venti soy lattes.  I was able to con­nect with my friends and read of their reac­tion to the adven­tures of Irene.  Since they are my friends, they are funny.

Fiona: “Hur­ri­cane Irene has offi­cially been down­graded to… British Summer.”

Molly: “Just fin­ished a hand san­i­tizer sponge bath.  Need water to come back on.”

As often hap­pens after a tor­nado or hur­ri­cane, the fol­low­ing days were jew­els of per­fec­tion.  Just look at the shad­ows of the leaves danc­ing on the clap­boards of Red Gate Farm.

Tues­day and Wednes­day were more of the same, work­ing our way through the still-chilly things in the fridge, find­ing more inven­tive ways to re-use water, feel­ing a bit sorry for our­selves hav­ing the end of our hol­i­day used up in cri­sis mode.  We played end­less rounds of “Aggra­va­tion” by the light of the can­de­labra given me years ago, one of a pair, by my chum Binky.  Under the cir­cum­stances, its Gothic excess was just what the doc­tor ordered.

And then Rol­lie stepped in.  Of course.

It was my first expe­ri­ence with a gen­er­a­tor!  We were able to top up the fridge, to charge our com­put­ers and phones!  There was never a more dul­cet sound than its grind­ing rum­bles.  We lis­tened in glee for sev­eral hours, until it had to go back its owner who had sev­eral bears and deer in his freezer.  Seri­ously.  This is rural Con­necti­cut after all, where gun­shots at dusk are not drug gangs, but neigh­bors clean­ing up the coy­otes from the valley.

Aside from a large num­ber of dis­placed stones mak­ing up the walls of the pond, every­thing got back to nor­mal at Red Gate Farm, at least outside.

Inside is another story.

Because one mas­sive drama is never enough in my life, we were vis­ited, both before and after Irene, with a demo­li­tion team to take apart the inte­rior of about 40% of my house.

You see, dur­ing our win­ter absence from Red Gate Farm, there were mas­sive snow­storms which resulted in a phe­nom­e­non called “ice dams” liv­ing on vul­ner­a­ble parts of our roofline for much of the months of Jan­u­ary through March.  And those ice dams decided it would be much nicer to live INDOORS, which resulted in leaks, mold and falling walls and ceil­ings in my kitchen table area, my laun­dry room, the liv­ing room, and Avery’s and our bed­room ceilings.

Because we did not want to sub­mit our many sum­mer vis­i­tors to the deba­cle that would be the demo­li­tion, we kindly waited till the end of the sum­mer, never of course dream­ing the project would be com­bined with a hur­ri­cane.  But there was a beau­ti­ful discovery!

Absolutely beau­ti­ful 200-year-old lath and plas­ter, per­fectly unscathed from the ice dam­age.  It is the unex­pected ben­e­fit of a house with­out insu­la­tion — there is nowhere for the leaked mois­ture to stay, so it dries itself out, leav­ing only dam­aged sur­faces, but under­neath, an archi­tec­tural trea­sure, which we’re going to try to keep exposed.  How excit­ing to be reminded that houses were made of TREES.

We learned a lot, talk­ing to the con­trac­tor whose inept and rather piti­ful work­ers were about to rip out all the lath before speak­ing to us.  Thank good­ness I hap­pened to peek in as they worked.  The con­trac­tor said, “It’s impor­tant to keep in mind that you could have ver­min liv­ing behind those walls, or in the attic, before you expose it.  Because most insur­ance poli­cies don’t cover ver­min like squir­rels.  Bet­ter if the dam­age is done by rac­coons.  That’s covered.”

“But squir­rels are mam­mals, just like rac­coons,” I objected.

“Well, turns out there are sub­sets of mam­mals,” he explained.

“I won­der if I could argue that there are sub­sets of humans, too,” I sug­gested, and John jumped in.

“Teenagers.”

“I like that!” Avery mut­tered in mock outrage.

“Well,” the con­trac­tor said, shak­ing his head, “I’ll go with the human-subset the­ory.  I’ve often mar­veled that despite the efforts of a lov­ing God, and the process of evo­lu­tion, my employ­ees have survived.”

Finally the con­trac­tors left, to be replaced some­time this fall by a restora­tion crew.  We can only hope all goes well, in our absence.

The sum­mer offi­cially ended with a final barn-cleanout on a beau­ti­ful blue-sky day, dry­ing the tarps that had col­lected hur­ri­cane water.

As always, the boxes in the barn are a never-ending source of amuse­ment, dis­cov­ery, nos­tal­gia.  This time we dis­cov­ered hun­dreds of pho­tos of us as new­ly­weds in the Sey­chelles on hon­ey­moon, John’s par­ents on hol­i­day in St Barts, real LET­TERS from his mom with hun­dreds of news­pa­per and mag­a­zine clip­pings – 20-year-old ver­sion of her emails now with lots of links to things we’ll find inter­est­ing.  No mat­ter how many times we go through those boxes, there is always some­thing to discover.

We had one last ten­nis game, one last swim at the town “Poo,” one last gen­er­ous and wel­come shower there.  “No need to swim, just use our show­ers if you need to!” said a cheery sign at the pool.  Tri­cia gen­er­ously offered her laun­dry facil­i­ties.  It takes a vil­lage, to sur­vive a hurricane.

And here is an unheard-of sight in my life: a com­pletely empty fridge!  We decided we could not rea­son­ably expect the power to come back on any­time soon (although it did just before I left for the air­port!), so every­thing went.  It will be fun to fill it up at Christmastime.

I spent my last night at Red Gate Farm alone among the can­dles, hav­ing been invited to Rollie’s, to Tricia’s (“din­ner in half a hour!” her lovely hus­band drove over to say), and to Mike’s (“for a meal or a shower or what­ever!”), but I decided to stay home and pack, get life in order, pre­pare to leave it all behind.

John and Avery report that all is well in Lon­don, the poor child hav­ing gone to the first day of school straight from Heathrow!  She has been put into a won­der­ful new maths set — not too much pres­sure, I hope — and her been reunited with her beloved friends.  Tacy the kitty is talk­ing up a storm.  “I told her to save some of her sto­ries for you,” Avery assured me.

And so I shall be there in just 12 hours or so, leav­ing the joys and sor­rows, the fla­vors and fam­ily and gen­er­ous friends, the pres­sures and panoply of expe­ri­ences that make up our Amer­i­can sum­mers.  Lon­don, here I come!