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It is easy, with a handful of years behind us, to say that on September 11, 2001, everything changed. It is easy to look back and see ourselves shifted into shadow and grief as though in that one horrible moment, something black crossed in front of the sun. And for some it is true, it was an instant between fine and not fine, between blissfully complacent and angry with fear, between the world being a boundless universe of wonder and the world collapsing into the space between our bodies and our television sets. It is easy to focus to that long awful moment when the planes reappeared, hit the towers or the ground, and everything fell.
But though my phone rang with concerns for my safety and well being -- I was clear the other side of the country! -- though my neighbor and I sat, stunned, and watched over and over as the smoke rose, as the text across the bottom of my TV stated that two other planes were "missing", though I could not believe my eyes, it was not right then that I felt the change. It was not until I headed to the airport eight, or maybe twelve weeks later that the feeling of something lost crept up the back of my neck and settled on me, right there in the departures terminal. I have never enjoyed flying, but I have also never been afraid. And in December, 2001, for the first time in life, I was afraid to fly.
I do not wish to belittle the tremendous loss felt by the families who lost those they loved on September 11th. I can not express my sympathy, still, for their pain and my hope that some day, justice will be served. My loss, this minor shift in feeling, is insignificant, it's nothing in the face of the gaping holes where fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and lovers and friends used to stand. The change for me is a small one, a falling out of love, the disappointment of a broken heart, the tarnishing of something that once seemed valuable. But it's my loss, it's the one I know, the one I can speak about.
September 11 changed travel. Not just for me, but for everyone, everywhere in the world. I saw it in 2008 when I handed over an unopened bottle of water that I'd purchased on the wrong side of the gate in Bangkok. I saw it last month when my sister in law, visiting from Europe, described the complicated visitor registration process she had to go through. I saw when, in 2006, rushing to make a connecting flight in London, the airlines staff raced me to the gate only to call me to a full stop to remove my shoes. I saw it in May when I dropped my husband off and was bullied on the airport drive for sitting too long in one place. My friend with the generic name who's on the no-fly list sees it. My Indian friend who's always pulled aside for special screening sees it. My house guests who arrived last weekend -- via a domestic flight -- without toothpaste see it. It is everywhere, this blanket of security wrapped around travel, designed to make us believe that there are those out to get us and those who are working hard to keep us safe.
I never minded the steely faced interrogators at the departures gate in Amsterdam or Munich because everyone got the same treatment but I hated -- I still hate -- taking off my shoes and pouring out my soda. In Molokai's tiny airport, I handed my unopened drink to some loitering taxi drivers rather than throw it away before being liberated of my sunscreen ten minutes later by a security guard. I've watched frustrated mothers in London hand over items that they'd been given on their previous flight because they weren't allowed into the arrivals terminal. I've watched young guys in desert garb singled out for special screening and I've been pulled into that line myself.
After 9/11, my folks canceled their trip to Egypt, Americans everywhere put their international holidays on hold. I flew anyway, holding my breath, eying the other passengers, thinking of the words of our former county executive, Ron Sims, who spoke at a rally I attended shortly after 9/11. "No man can cause me to fear my neighbor," he said, and I hoped that was the case but I knew
