email413.xml

email413.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-08-19

a friend living overseas wrote:


> I read the president's speech on CNN website as well as an article about a
> hockey game being cancelled to listen to the speech. Quite moving and
> impressive.
>
> Now I want to hear from you about what you are hearing and feeling and
> thinking...be my window on the world back home, please!
>


Sigh.......
I have no idea where to begin...

To tell you that I cry myself to sleep? When I can sleep...
To tell you that the moment I wake, I cry?

That, with every breath, I beg, I BEG God not to take my sons ( into the Military)?

One of the greatest joys of my life was my safety in this country. It is gone.
I rejoiced in the inherent security I enjoyed. While I suffered with other
populations at war, in famine.. I was comforted that we were 'safe'.
I have never spoken one ill word against America. I have cherished my life in
this country.

I know you have lived in areas outside of the U.S. I know you have seen
many conditions that I have not and it is it my intention to sound like an
isolationist.
Simply, I am trying to come to terms with my grief. While I mourn for all the
mothers, fathers and children that were murdered and I know some of them...I
also mourn for the feeling of safety, the security I so loved.

I feel that I have led a better life than my children will...
Not economically; although that may prove to be true as well, but the peace
that was a part of my being will not be with them.
Never did I look into the sky and fear an airplane. Never did I listen to a
President addressing Congress as we went to war
My generation lived after WWII and before September 11, 2001. It was a
privileged existence and it is gone.
Many of those that lost their lives were of my generation. May they rest in
Peace. May they not suffer the fear that we now know.

The fear that was born on that day will live with my children forever. How will
it change their lives? How will it change their souls?

You ask what the U.S. is like today.

We are weeping.
It has been 10 days and we are still weeping.
We hang our flags and wear our ribbons to honor a country that has changed.
We want to act normally but there is no normal. We seem to be walking in
circles...

But, we are together. You need only to look into another's eyes to know what
they are thinking.
To know that they, too, are struggling with great grief. To see their resolve.
We will do what we must.


I know you are craving specifics, Cathy. Perhaps, I just can't acknowledge
anything specific yet...

I live 75 miles west of Washington, DC and about 150 miles south of New York
City. Everyone, everyone, I know has lost someone.

Seeing the photos of the last 10 days is helpful to me.


Others would not want to view them but I find them necessary to my being able
to accept this. I tell myself, "That was then, this is now", "That was then,
this is now", one million times a day as I struggle to accept this new America.
I force myself into a place where everything is different, where our very
landmarks are changed.

-J

9-21-01

Explaining America Now-to a friend overseas