my personal 9-11 trivia

On the day, I ate breakfast at my kitchen table in Cleveland. The table was a family antique; I had brought it up from Orlando when I separated from my husband and set up my own, new life in Ohio. I wish I could remember what I ate.

The next year, on the anniversary, I woke up and opened the door of the little homemade cabin on a tiny rock island off the coast of Vancouver Island, BC and smelled the Pacific ocean, just a few steps away. I'd found the vacation rental on the internet. A friend had asked, after I'd paid the full payment and not just a deposit, sight unseen, "But how do you know it really exists?" It did and I wrote in the guest book about 9/11.

Another year I stood in the wind looking at the Irish Sea, my feet sinking into the white sand of a small Scottish island.

The next year after that, the person I changed my life with the same year we all realized, like so many people in the world had been forced to know before us, that life is short - well, we were each tethered to an ipod, a dual jack with two sets of headphones. We listened to Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" and marveled at the way the central Australian desert hills looked like a cityscape, but rounded.

This year, I woke up and made a cup of tea. Organic English breakfast tea, the same tea I drink every morning. I wrote my morning pages. Later I might plant those snake beans someone gave me a couple of days ago. Some gardening would be good.

And at 11:00 a.m., I'll bring some people together for a meeting. A simple lease will be signed, but it's the parties to the lease that have me reflecting this morning. We'll be there, the representatives of the non-aboriginal church. And they will be there, the representatives of the aboriginal corporation. They will sign a lease to use a building on land that was theirs. We will accept their payment for the use of a building that we built on land that was theirs. The terms are generous, well beyond fair and yet. and yet. There is still an element of us and them and a sad inherent irony. My 9-11 anniversary hope is that somehow this is "power over" inching its way towards shared empowerment.