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September 11, 2005
9/11 Essay: In praise of the Ordinary Life - repost
*Author's note: I wrote this last year, less than two weeks after I started blogging. I had, maybe, five readers? Now over 1000 people a day stop by to visit. In rereading what I wrote I find my basic wish the same, so I offer it to you, dear reader, because I feel exactly the same way today as a year ago. And please, take the time to visit here
I’ve spent this past week thinking about what I would write today. For me, as for many, September 11, 2001, is the seminal moment of my adult life. It has shaped me. It has shaped my approach to the macro issues surrounding my country and the world in which it exists. Whether or not I am consciously aware of the profundity of 9/11 as I read world news or debate with others on the Internet or in the flesh, I can look back at the person I was on 9/10/01 and realize the path I’m now on is not the one I was following then.
Words. Millions of words will be written today. Words that will recount exactly where we were, what we were doing, how we felt as we heard the words. For me, here in California, it was being barely asleep as the clock radio went off, tuned to my usual morning station KFI640 AM and hearing host Bill Handel say, “We’ve just gotten a report that a plane has hit the World Trade Center.”
Time stopped. Time has never been the same.
However, let me move beyond that. Move beyond the remembering of that horrible day. So many people will be writing and speaking today with words more eloquent than mine of their own experience. They will speak to history of witnessing it and of their loved ones lost in it. Others will not speak today, choosing to remember quietly, in reverent silence and in an effort not to be consumed in a reliving of the horror still too close.
September 11, 2001, was an ordinary day. It was a day filled by ordinary tasks. Parents frustrated by dawdling youngsters. Commuters musing on where they’d have lunch that day and if they had time to stop for coffee before getting to the office. Turn on the tv, turn on the radio, listen for the weather, listen for the traffic report. Mommy, I can’t find my homework! Mommy, he’s making faces at me again, tell him to stop! Sweetie? Have you seen my blue tie? Hon, that went to the cleaners. Oh, can you pick up the cleaning on the way home today, I have a late meeting and won’t be able….
“Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.”
I want the ordinariness back. I really enjoy a life of family and work and books and home. I raise my children to be good people. I volunteer in my community to give back when others can’t. I’ve been a Band Booster mom, a Soccer mom and a PTA mom. I’ve organized fundraisers. I’ve organized donations to help my neighbors through tragedy. I was a Girl Scout and always buy their cookies. I’ve taught my daughters how to ride a bike and crochet a scarf. I’ve sewed Halloween costumes and prom dresses. I’ve hosted exchange students and been there for my children’s friends when they needed an adult’s ear. My own life has had its triumphs and tragedies but was never centered upon forcing change on my neighbors to conform to my way of life.
I’m part of those great-unwashed masses that is sneered at for the sheer middle-class ordinariness of my life.
I don’t revel in the changes in this country. I don’t gleefully caper on the bodies of the victims of 9/11 as proof of America’s evilness as too many others do. I don’t dismiss whole segments of the country because the people living there don’t wear the same clothes or listen to the same music as I do.
I want my ordinariness back, not by retreating into 9/10/01 and pretending 9/11/01 didn’t happen. Or by trying to dismiss it by saying it was Yes.it.was.Tragic.BUT. (ah … that magic “but” that lets you know the preceeding words are going to be negated by the following words.)
I want my ordinariness back by going through 9/11. Faced dead on, fully experienced, fully remembered and as the impetus to fight, not only for the ordinariness of my life, but also for the ordinariness of the future lives of my children and grandchildren. How nice when my grandsons start kindergarten that the biggest worry their mom will have is if they will like their teacher, not about if the school is a target for terrorists. How nice will it be if each approaching American holiday my grandsons’ experience will be excitement at the celebration with BBQ’s and fireworks, not threat levels and heightened security.
I realize I want to secure that ordinariness for them, as my parents and grandparents wanted the ordinariness for me when they faced fighting the fascism of their time.
It is an extraordinary responsibility that faces my generation; to both recognize the modern fascist ideology of Islamism, and to be dedicated to defeating it. And the defeat will not only be on battlefields, but will come within our hearts. It will come in defeating the nihilism that permeates our culture and holds us of the ordinary life responsible for the evilness of others. It is not easy and we will be tested again and again; but can we do less than what was asked of our parents and grandparents?
Today, I fly my flag, I offer my prayers to those lost and those that remain behind, I praise and feel pride in the men and women who are giving so much to me by being in United States Armed Forces.
Most of all, I wish for all my fellow citizens is a future of ordinariness.
Posted by Darleen at September 11, 2005 12:01 AM
Comments
Kee-rist, the Butch is quoting the Beatles! If you were worth it, old John Lennon would be rolling over in his grave. He LOATHED people like you. His entire reason for being was to try and warn the world about people like you.
What a fucking egotist. This puerile essay is worth reposting. Are you also going to march in the invitation-only 9/11 glorification tomorrow, complete with plastic dogtags?
LOL, I'm sure they thought they could wring a little more political profit out of the blood of the innocents. But looks like that well done went dry.
Posted by: Leftard Jihadist at September 10, 2005 06:16 PM
Thank you, Hrubec, for proving my point. Your hatred of ordinary America, of those of us that have made the decisions and hold sacred the values that allow you to spew you vileness and hatred with never the fear of the knock on the door that you would get if you were a dissident in the kind of country YOU crave, is on full ugly display.
Ironic that you use anti-gay slurs, what with being a proud member of the ostensible "tolerant" Left cult.
Posted by: Darleen at September 10, 2005 10:55 PM
Shut the fuck up. "those of us who have made the decisions and hold sacred the values". You are so full of your own shit I can smell you from here.
The whole world is waking up to exactly the kind of "decisions" your people make and what kind of "values" they hold sacred.
Mark Williams of You Dont Speak for Me, Cindy: they (blacks) didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention center expiring
Rush Limbaugh : "Mayor Nay-ger" (over and over and over)
"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
Rep. Richard Baker, (R) U.S. Congressman from Baton Rouge
Barbara Bush:You know they were underprivileged anyway so (chuckles) this is working out very well for them.
Those are your values LOL. Something tells me all that faithbased payola isn't looking like such a great investment these days.
As for decision making PLEASE it's too early for me to laugh this hard. But I'll just sum it up in one sentence from your dear leader, the boy-king: Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
Now I applaud how you all are going to tramp down pennsylvania Avenue today to pat yourselves on the back for ....uh, NOT preventing the worst terrorist attack on American soil....and for taking all the credit for the work done by NYC first responders while your dear leader waited for his PR men to engineer his pretend leadership...and for washing yourselves in the blood of those innocents and whoring that tragedy for political gain. I do applaud that. It's very laudable. You might notice nobody gives a shit anymore about how great you all are, since we just witnessed what incompetent buffoons you all are.
But I think you need to remember something : YOU didn't do shit. YOU wrote up a hatefilled butchy blog.
Posted by: Leftard Jihadist at September 11, 2005 03:57 AM
Geez, Hrubec, a bit of projection there, eh?
Racist/classist/sexist, heal thyself.
And, believer I am in allowing, shall we say, dissenting voices in my comments, I think the value difference between you and I is being made perfectly clear.
Posted by: Darleen at September 11, 2005 08:01 AM
Lets be honest, Darleen, without dissenting comments, you wouldn't have too many comments at all. LOL. Maroon.
If you're really getting 1000 hits a day, ( guarantee they're mostly from people who come to laugh at your ass, at the sorry state of American conservatism. I know I've sent quite a few over here, and they very much enjoy it!
Posted by: Leftard Jihadist at September 11, 2005 08:45 AM
Hey Fucktard Jihadist,
Actually, we don't have to comment because most of us just have nothing to add to what she says. Sometimes it seems silly to just comment with "exactly." LOL. Maroon.
Here's a thought: why don't you get a life and/or YOUR OWN blog, since you spend so much time on "dissenting comments"? How fucking pathetic are you where you think "dissenting comments" such as yours (a sanitized euphemism for "shitting on the carpet") are going to change ANYONE'S mind?
Or is your sole point to fling poo? That's not "dissenting comments," yanno--that's just childish. God, what a fucking pathetic waste of humanity you are, Leftard.
Darleen, nice essay. "Exactly." ;-)
Posted by: Beth at September 11, 2005 09:36 AM
This is a proper posting that is well worth republishing. Excellent, Darleen.
Posted by: sadie at September 11, 2005 10:59 AM
Wonderful post, Darleen. It's true that many people walk around now at a hightened state of awareness now that we didn't have before 9/11. We've seen the very worst in humanity, and we know (by your friend here and others like him) that it isn't going away. Oh, but what we wouldn't do for one more moment of that ignorant bliss before the world came crumbling down around us.
For most of us, though, there is no more ignorance (obviously not for ALL of us, though!).
RG
Posted by: RightGirl at September 11, 2005 02:30 PM
Very touching essay, Darleen.
Hey, Hate-Boy. Didn't your mama teach you that when you come to someone else's place you don't poop on the floor, then brag about it?
Posted by: Claire at September 12, 2005 08:39 AM