A phone upstairs starts to ring. Once, twice, thrice ... no answer, receiver’s gone to work already. It’s a warm sun beating down on the other side of the curtain. It’s going to be a beautiful September day, on the heels of a string of beautiful September days. God has been smiling on the Midwest for a couple of months, keeping us from miserable heat and early winter.

The phone upstairs rings again. I pull my head from the water stream thinking it’s my own phone. There’d been a call earlier but I was still in bed, boycotting outside communication. But, no, I’m pretty sure it’s coming from upstairs, the sound drifting through the open bathroom window. Again, it rings unanswered.

I shouldn’t be taking my sweet time in the shower but I’m so sleepy and I need to wake up for work. The warm water braiding through my hair, down the back of my head, caressing my neck and shoulders, pooling on the stained porcelain beneath my feet. It feels so good to just stand midstream and be a part of the tide.

By the time my slow, invigorating shower is done, the upstairs phone has rung six separate times. I can only imagine what the caller must be thinking to ring so insistently, so many times. Is he screening my calls? Has he fallen and can’t get to the phone? That is my last smile of the day.

After I dress, I return to the living room to wake up my boyfriend. He’s slept through all of the phone calls, here and upstairs. As I reach for him, I remember our own early call and instead walk over to the phone. The dial tone stutters with a message. It’s Jay’s mom. A plane slammed into the World Trade Centers in New York. Then another. It’s terrorism. I try to picture the towers in my head but I’ve never been to New York, never really paid attention. Jay’s mom is highly excitable and I’m sure she’s exaggerating.

“Jay, wake up.”

“Huh?”

“Wake up. Your mom called.”

“Unh. What’d she want?”

“She said two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York City.”

“Hunh?”

“She says we should turn on the TV.”

“Then turn on the TV,” he grunts. He knows even better her excitable nature.

I find the remote on the table behind his head and reach for it, nearly falling atop him.

“Hey! Watch it.” He’s a grumpy morning person.

“Sorry.” I hit the buttons and begin watching.

By mid-morning, we’ve talked to everyone we know, exclaiming how could this happen, vowing to get the assholes who planned this catastrophe. I can’t believe it, it hardly even registers. I called the office to see what was going on and they were closing up shop. It was deemed unsafe to be anywhere near the downtown region of any major metropolitan area in America and my building was a mere seven blocks east of the tallest skyscraper in America, formerly the world.

Logically, I understand what happened. But there’s a majority of the pie chart within me that doesn’t accept it, therefore ceases to acknowledge it. The newscasters babble on about some other country’s catastrophe, not my own. This can’t possibly have happened here. I don’t know anybody in New York, not closely, so I have no one to grieve for or worry about. This makes it easier to disbelieve.

The day passes in the reflection of the television screen. The newscasters feed our frenzy with large numbers and fingers pointing East. As a nation, we are one in front of our TVs. Little do we know that we will never get tired of the streaming media at the bottom of our screens. It may give us headaches but we just take our aspirin and continue to read.

A week later, on my 30th birthday, Jay & I are not on a plane headed for Amsterdam as was planned. Our tickets have been exchanged for vouchers, good for one year. I’m not pleased about the turn of events. I often and vociferously curse the terrorists who made us think this way and ruined my 30th birthday. The plan was to get out of the country. I’d never been out of the country and I was turning 30. It was time for me to see some of the world outside. I just picked a bad time to turn 30 is all. Or I should have had these worldly dreams much sooner. Because now is no time to leave the country.

My family breathes a collective sigh of relief when the decision is made to stay. They’re old and accept fear as a determining factor. I am alone. Everyone is relieved we’re not going. Except me. A part of me thinks we’ll never use those vouchers and that my one chance is gone. I procrastinated too long; the wind blew the castle back into a beach. Two months have gone by and the world is still scared. And I still haven’t accepted it. I must be really, really brave or really, really dumb. The only thing that scares me is the inconspicuous dissolution of the Constitution due to a nation’s paranoia. We don’t think we’re the greatest nation anymore, haven’t since Vietnam. We don’t trust in our own, inherent goodness anymore. We actually believe we can be defeated. That scares me. Our pomp and circumstance is rife with lies we tell ourselves to make ourselves sleep at night and face others in the light of day. Our flag-waving is transparent, at least it is to me and that only makes me sad. We may have a sudden resurgence of love and honor in our nation, but deep down, we know that it took a catastrophe to remind us and that makes us feel guilty. So we wave our flags wider and yell louder and hate stronger.

I’ve been a patriot as long as I can remember. I’ve always known that I must be lucky to have been born and raised in the United States of America. I’ve always understood that our country compares favorably to any other on the face of this planet. Even while I’ve recognized our vast and varied faults, I’ve loved this land. A bad day in America is better than a great day anywhere else. It makes me sad that many citizens are just beginning to understand this.

We talk of 9/11 often now. It’s been titled to the day. September, the word and the month, will forever carry this taint with it. One week before my birthday will always be a day of mourning and remembrance. I hate the fucking assholes who did this. May Allah piss on their faces when they show themselves to him. May pigs infest their countrysides and their homes, carrying with them disease and the Devil. May Hell exile these murderous pigs to ether. To Nothing. To eternity in fog, alone, each of them. I liked my country the way it was; I don’t like it so much anymore. You ruined my country, my dream. Fuck you! May your nuts be replaced with Pork Rinds. You turban-headed, blasphemous Pig Fuckers. May your jihad end in your own bloodbath, each of you to a head. No followers to martyr you, no Allah to save you. America is real, you are Ether.

Looking forward to 2002, a year as yet untainted