It's the day after 9/11, the buzzing of my alarm at 6:35am both sickening and soothing to my ears. A new day arrived, but the pounding of my heart nails me to the bed frame. I can only move my eyes, my body too defeated and disgusted by its own inconsequential problems to move. I have an appointment with my doctor at 9am to discuss my test results.
Eighteen years ago, I was almost thirty-seven and dreaming of becoming a mother, even if my ovaries hadn’t given their approval. Then, less than twenty-four hours later, I’d aged a hundred years, or so it seemed, and I was no longer convinced that I wanted to be pregnant.
How could you bring another innocent child into this vicious world? I asked myself on 9/11, watching the horrors play out across the television screen.
And how blinded had I become to the unspeakable violence that existed in the world, too busy sloshing around in my own infertility bubble to look up and see what was happening anywhere else. Maybe you could adopt, I said to myself so often. There are so many foster children in need of dedicated parents. You could be one of them. Maybe then I could buy the rocking chair I'd come to admire each day I passed it in the storefront window near my office.
Like I always did when I drank my coffee before work, I turned the TV on around 6:50am to watch the news. The South Tower was on fire, then I watched in disbelief as another plane plunged into the second tower while I sipped from my coffee cup. That TV stayed on until my husband finally turned it off somewhere around 1am San Francisco time. But throughout the wee hours of the night, I could still hear their cries in my dreams: the parents, brothers, sisters, and then the unheard children I'd imagined, stunned and shocked into silence from the news that their father or mother was inside the Twin Towers when they collapsed.
Like everyone, everywhere, I couldn't stop thinking about the brutally of it all -- the pain those families and children were suffering, and would continue to suffer as the knife of reality lodged itself deeper into their hearts.
My mind swirled with haunting images and cries of real and imagined grief, as I heard the alarm clock buzzing on 9/12. The idea of adoption still floating like an angel above my head, I managed to lift my arm and hit the “snooze” button every five minutes. At least one of my arms appeared to be functioning, but there was no snoozing, just a repetitive motion that was getting me nowhere fast. I could see a sliver of light through the bedroom curtains which revealed the sky might be blue. The sun actually rose again, which was surreal in and of itself. 9/12 began to look like the exact replica of the morning before it, yet it felt nothing like the morning before it. It was the anti-Christ of the morning before it. If 9/11 was a living nightmare, then 9/12 was surely hell personified.
I kept staring at the digital numbers on the clock, the even numbers soothing me, the odd ones egging me on to make a decision. Would I make it to my doctor's appointment on time? Would my eyes be half closed on the way there? I knew I wasn't alone in the decisions I faced, even though my husband had left for his office before my alarm went off. I wondered if he'd gotten any real sleep. Had anyone slept the night of 9/11? Including George W. Bush? This might've been what worried me the most -- a president and an administration running the country on raging insomnia, an endless supply of coffee and revenge at their fingertips.
I wanted to call my mother for comfort and ask her what I should do, but I didn't want to wake her so early. Do I drive into work and carry on with business-as-usual? Is that what Motorola and corporate America expects of me? And if I say no, and the rest of the team says no, then what? We lose our jobs? I wanted to tell my boss, None of this matters! I don't care anymore about corporate earnings, market-share, and the latest, greatest consumer gizmo. Thousands of people were obliterated in front of our eyes on a sunny Tuesday morning.
I quit! I wanted to say. I'm going to do something with my life that matters, but I was afraid to lose my income and you need the money, I convinced myself. Adoption costs money, and your future adopted child needs stability.
I smashed the alarm clock buzzer down one last time, punched the mattress afterwards, and made my way to the bathroom. I splashed water into my face and eyes and realized I could call in sick. Isn't that the truth? I asked myself.
Wandering around in a daze, I found myself in the living room again, the TV remote in my hand, the news reporters talking about the numbers of fatalities. I began to shake --my stomach, my head-- I couldn't calm down, the numbers were too much for my body. I could no longer make the phone calls I needed to make to my doctor, my boss, to the staff. The only thing my body could do was hum, and I recognized the melody from a lullaby I'd written years earlier for a friend's baby, though I never met him. Then I collapsed on the floor and began to rock myself back and forth. I could almost see myself from above and knew it didn't look good -- a woman who wants to be a mother rocking herself on the floor, singing a lullaby for a baby she'd never even met. That's something a "real" mother would do when her child is inconsolable. Now I was inconsolable. But I kept telling myself again and again how much the world needs love and comfort, and I kept rocking and singing.
Though I knew I was mothering myself, though some call it self-care, soothing myself helped me to grab hold of the oars in my own lifeboat. My body and mind began to respond as I took hold, and I was finally able to get myself off the floor. My heart and soul were still confused, still frail and partly cracked, but at least they seemed to understand one another, and they began to row in sync. They consulted with my legs and hands, and I was able to get up, walk to the kitchen and dial my doctor's number to say I'd be late, but I would be there. Later that morning, on September 12, my doctor gave me the news that my ovaries were still functioning. Less than two years later, my daughter arrived. Three years after that, my son was born. I still think about adoption, lament over it actually. And I'll never forget the thousands of children who lost their parents on 9/11 -- and when those thoughts are too heavy for my heart to hold, I sit down in our rocking chair and sing myself a lullaby. I just wish it were enough.
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