What Goes Around Comes Around

Oh, to be fourteen again - NOT! I remember being 14. I was rotten. I called my younger sister names. I screamed at my mother. I ridiculed her for ruining a particular sweater in the dryer. (It was a black V-neck pointelle - I still remember.) I've been doing my own laundry ever since then.

When I was just fourteen I lied, I stole out of the house, I kissed a boy. I thought my mother wanted to keep me 'chained' in the house for the rest of my life!! She just didn't understand. Even if she asked, I couldn't tell my mother what I was thinking or feeling!

I would talk to my best friend on the phone almost every night. Yes, a real phone that you actually dialed. We talked, careful to keep our conversations from younger siblings. We shared secrets, dreams, who we were, who we liked and who we didn't. We helped each other solve the really big problems in life and algebra. I couldn't have gotten through the 1970's without her.

Being a parent in these times is challenging. Being a step-mom has its own array of dilemmas. My teen SD (I'll call her Meme for this blog) talks to me - sometimes. Mostly she texts her friends. Sometimes she pretends not to hear me, or she gives me the "I don't know" non-answer. Sometimes she's downright snippy. I know what she really doesn't know is what she feels or how to convey it. That's okay Meme, I understand. Just like my mom did. What goes around comes around.

I'm From New York

I didn’t grow up in the canyons of Manhattan or in the boroughs of Brooklyn or the Bronx but rather in the pastoral drumlins of an apple orchard near Lake Ontario. I’m from New York.

I wasn’t working in a high-rise building then running for my life as two towers of American strength & ingenuity fell to the ground. I was working in Berkeley, California across the Bay from San Francisco, the financial capital of the American West. United 93 was originally bound for SFO.

I was up early and watching CNN & GMA from my hotel room as I prepared for a normal day. I heard Diane & Charlie tell us as the day changed from anything but normal. In the space of seventeen minutes the world was different, terrifyingly and forever changed. September 11^th Blue became a color we would recognize; pure, clear and cloudless.

When Washington DC was attacked we knew it was war. The only question for me, and millions of Americans was, “Who is the enemy?”

I’m from New York but my home is in Pennsylvania. Shanksville, Somerset, Pennsylvania is about 80 miles from where I lived then and now. It was Pittsburgh’s local news teams that were early on the scene showing the world the images that resulted from the heroism on Flight 93.

As the smoke and tears filled that morning, we all wanted answers to “why?” had this happened to our great country. How could it be that the Twin Towers had crumbled in one hundred and two minutes? Our capital was attacked. There was a hole in the Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania was scarred with burnt jet fuel and a giant crater.

How many were killed? How many had escaped? In the subsequent days we heard many chronicles of lives lost, dreams buried. We saw the dramatic efforts made by first responders and other volunteers who toiled for weeks in the rubble. I didn’t know until a year later about the various ships that carried hundreds of thousands of survivors across the river to safety in New Jersey. These captains were among the unsung heroes whose stories we would hear later.

People lined up to give blood. We stood together and joined hands and prayed. Donations were made to survivor funds and foundations. Memorials were erected across our great nation and around the world. People told their stories. We came to realize we were truly one nation pulling together, healing from tragedy. We must continue to do this.

I’m from New York. I’m an American and I remember.