Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 2:02am
The remedy still resides in us
Column: Life at First Sight
Six years ago this week, my father and I were on our last leg of a trip south from his summer place in Maine to his Florida home. As we drove, we reminisced about his years in Civil Defense after a 22-year Army career, my mother's experience during the London Blitz in World War II, and the incredible good that terrible times often can uncover in people.
Then, as we were passing through Atlanta on I-75, we spied an electronic highway message board that read: "National Emergency — All Airports Closed."
As I turned on the car radio, information was instant and omnipresent. In the 20 minutes that we'd been out of touch with national events, there'd been an awful — unfathomable — cascade of them, too large to actually grasp mentally. The dangling detail of the still unaccounted-for United Airlines Flight 93 chilled me most. (Of course, I hadn't yet seen the images of New York's skyline.) I remember experiencing a feeling of smallness and vulnerability, unlike any I remember, as all my illusions of safety came down at once, like those destroyed towers.
This was my father's first return South since my mother's death 10 months before. How grateful I was that he hadn't been alone on this day that would come to be known worldwide simply by its date, 9/11.
What, I wondered, was our life as a nation going to be like, now that it had, like those four flight plans, taken such an abrupt and terrible turn? My first thought was, as my father and I had just been discussing, that such magnitude of terror and pain can often unleash a commensurately large outpouring of human goodness, the kind that seems to flood to the surface when things are almost too dreadful for us to bear. I hoped that larger numbers of us would deepen our resolve to cultivate that greater and higher part of us, the one that contributes to the most lasting, beneficial outcomes. And I hoped that that this kind of response would last well beyond the weeks and months to come.
Four days later, after a Category 3 hurricane had made landfall near my dad's home and I'd truly begun to wonder whether the world was coming to an end, I took my place in a blocks-long line at Tampa's International Airport. I was praying that this might really be the day that I'd be able to get home to New Hampshire. If I did, I'd be on one of the very first flights in the country that day, a day when many wished that we'd never have to fly again.
Every single child I saw that day looked scared. Most of the younger ones clutched their backpacks like stuffed animals, if they didn't happen to be holding those, too. Their parents looked grim, if not equally frightened.
Most everyone seemed to be holding it together, though, except for a boy of about 9, who, with his parents and younger brother, was waiting to board the same plane I was. His terror had simply become too large for him to contain. His plaintive sounds were agonizing, perhaps because so many of us also had them muffled way down deep inside. His poor parents, exhausted after days of canceled flights — a trip to Disney World that had become a nightmare from which they couldn't seem to awaken — were doing their very best to calm him, with no effect.
Gradually, others of us stepped forward to try to reassure him. Obviously a polite child, he would leave off his agitation for a time and hear us out, but then his sobs and desperation would return. He was convinced that if he got on this airplane, on any airplane, he was going to die.
The pilot and flight attendants took gentle, patient time with him, yet gained little ground. The person who finally made the difference was a grandmotherly passenger with a soft Southern accent who takes that flight every other week for business travel. She introduced all of the flight crew to him by name as her friends, then asked him a question I didn't hear, but that he took a while to consider before answering. She told him it was OK if he felt afraid, and she told him that she'd felt that way, too.
Then I heard her say: "We need you to come with us, because it's important to be with your family and to go home. We need to be together, because we all have to help each other now. That's how we can stay safe, and how we can feel OK again."
When she put her arms around him, he relaxed against her as though relieved and stayed there for an unhurried while.
When boarding began, he joined his family quietly. He suddenly remembered his bewildered younger brother and took cards out of his pocket so that they could play together.
I'm sure this wise and compassionate woman's words ultimately made sense to him. They definitely helped him realize that he wasn't alone in his fears. And that we had important things to do, and we needed him to help us do them. That way, we could help each other feel better again.
She seemed to know exactly what we should say and do for our children — and each other. I don't think the essential wisdom in her response has changed very much at all, or that it applied only to that day, or to how we'd survive and go on after something like Sept. 11.
"We need to be together, because we all have to help each other now. That's how we can stay safe, and how we can feel OK again."
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.
Then, as we were passing through Atlanta on I-75, we spied an electronic highway message board that read: "National Emergency — All Airports Closed."
As I turned on the car radio, information was instant and omnipresent. In the 20 minutes that we'd been out of touch with national events, there'd been an awful — unfathomable — cascade of them, too large to actually grasp mentally. The dangling detail of the still unaccounted-for United Airlines Flight 93 chilled me most. (Of course, I hadn't yet seen the images of New York's skyline.) I remember experiencing a feeling of smallness and vulnerability, unlike any I remember, as all my illusions of safety came down at once, like those destroyed towers.
This was my father's first return South since my mother's death 10 months before. How grateful I was that he hadn't been alone on this day that would come to be known worldwide simply by its date, 9/11.
What, I wondered, was our life as a nation going to be like, now that it had, like those four flight plans, taken such an abrupt and terrible turn? My first thought was, as my father and I had just been discussing, that such magnitude of terror and pain can often unleash a commensurately large outpouring of human goodness, the kind that seems to flood to the surface when things are almost too dreadful for us to bear. I hoped that larger numbers of us would deepen our resolve to cultivate that greater and higher part of us, the one that contributes to the most lasting, beneficial outcomes. And I hoped that that this kind of response would last well beyond the weeks and months to come.
Four days later, after a Category 3 hurricane had made landfall near my dad's home and I'd truly begun to wonder whether the world was coming to an end, I took my place in a blocks-long line at Tampa's International Airport. I was praying that this might really be the day that I'd be able to get home to New Hampshire. If I did, I'd be on one of the very first flights in the country that day, a day when many wished that we'd never have to fly again.
Every single child I saw that day looked scared. Most of the younger ones clutched their backpacks like stuffed animals, if they didn't happen to be holding those, too. Their parents looked grim, if not equally frightened.
Most everyone seemed to be holding it together, though, except for a boy of about 9, who, with his parents and younger brother, was waiting to board the same plane I was. His terror had simply become too large for him to contain. His plaintive sounds were agonizing, perhaps because so many of us also had them muffled way down deep inside. His poor parents, exhausted after days of canceled flights — a trip to Disney World that had become a nightmare from which they couldn't seem to awaken — were doing their very best to calm him, with no effect.
Gradually, others of us stepped forward to try to reassure him. Obviously a polite child, he would leave off his agitation for a time and hear us out, but then his sobs and desperation would return. He was convinced that if he got on this airplane, on any airplane, he was going to die.
The pilot and flight attendants took gentle, patient time with him, yet gained little ground. The person who finally made the difference was a grandmotherly passenger with a soft Southern accent who takes that flight every other week for business travel. She introduced all of the flight crew to him by name as her friends, then asked him a question I didn't hear, but that he took a while to consider before answering. She told him it was OK if he felt afraid, and she told him that she'd felt that way, too.
Then I heard her say: "We need you to come with us, because it's important to be with your family and to go home. We need to be together, because we all have to help each other now. That's how we can stay safe, and how we can feel OK again."
When she put her arms around him, he relaxed against her as though relieved and stayed there for an unhurried while.
When boarding began, he joined his family quietly. He suddenly remembered his bewildered younger brother and took cards out of his pocket so that they could play together.
I'm sure this wise and compassionate woman's words ultimately made sense to him. They definitely helped him realize that he wasn't alone in his fears. And that we had important things to do, and we needed him to help us do them. That way, we could help each other feel better again.
She seemed to know exactly what we should say and do for our children — and each other. I don't think the essential wisdom in her response has changed very much at all, or that it applied only to that day, or to how we'd survive and go on after something like Sept. 11.
"We need to be together, because we all have to help each other now. That's how we can stay safe, and how we can feel OK again."
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.