flashback friday: most days i can't put to rest the burning city smoking in my mind

written 09.11.01 - titled "Lightning Crashes"

The angel opens her eyes. Pale blue colored iris reflects the surface, puts the glory up so high, high... oh now feel it coming back again like a roll of thunder chasing the wind, forces pulling from the center of the earth again, I can feel it... ~ LIVE ~

The first time I heard that song was in April of 1995. There had just been a horrible bombing in Oklahoma City and all of the local radio stations were running a version of LIVE's 'Lightning Crashes' with sound clips spliced into it. It was horrible and beautiful at the same time.

I fell in love with the song and immediately tried to tape it off of the radio - the "Oklahoma City Remix" is the version I ended up with. I still have it on tape and although I have not heard it recently, I found the unlabeled cassette in my room not too long ago and put it in to see what it was... and just started sobbing.

When I woke up this morning, my nose was running and I ran to the windowsill to get a tissue. It was 7:55 AM. I got back into bed, relieved that I had an hour and a half to go until my alarm was to go off, and thinking about all of the reading I'd have to do later in the afternoon... but thinking that I'd worry about it later.

Anna's alarm went off right before 8:30 and I was half awake through all of her getting dressed... but I really woke up when Raina came into the room. She told us that her parents had called to tell her about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center... Anna and I were both like, "Wow... that's really something..." and didn't think much more about it. In fact, I went back to bed.

But then my dad called me from his business trip in Florida. And then my mom called me immediately after. And I still didn't think anything of it. It was a plane crash and it was horrible but it wasn't "too close for comfort" for me... after all, the WTC was way downtown and I'm nearing midtown, where I'm dorming.

But then I started thinking about Lauren. And Mary. Both of whom dorm within a five minute walk from the WTC. Mary was probably on her way to campus, but Lauren student teaches even closer to the world trade center than where her dorm is. So I got nervous and started making phone calls to cell phones in hopes of reaching them. No luck. And then I really started panicking. And when Raina came back and said 'OH MY GOD, A SECOND PLANE JUST HIT", minutes after Anna left for class, I officially went into panic mode. Because I realized that it wasn't an "accident" anymore.

Raina and I watched in horror as the crash into the Pentagon was announced on the news... and the fire in the Washington Mall... we watched Tower 1 collapse... and Tower 2... and then Janeen came home from class, crying hysterically. (I had abandoned all thoughts of going to my own classes at this point, assuming that the teachers would have to understand.)

The minute I realized that the phones weren't working, I immediately went to my computer and started e-mailing everyone I knew. Family, friends from school, friends from home, friends who I hadn't talked to in years. I wanted everyone to know I was okay. Thank God for the internet... I reached so many people, who got in touch with other people who spread the word... Canadian Crush, who is in Dublin this semester, sent out an e-mail begging us all to e-mail him confirming we were all alright... thank you to everyone who IMed me today to make sure that I was ok. Ray, LeeAndra and Amber, you were the first three people out of everyone that I spoke to... thank you so much for keeping me and my friends in your thoughts and prayers throughout the day.

Anna returned shortly after with a group of friends from class who couldn't get back to their dorms because of the subway closure and the downtown NYC evacuation and our room became a sort of temporary safe haven... we made a bunch of food and we all took turns attempting phone calls, sending e-mails, and watching the TV. Mary showed up at my dorm safe and sound to join us and Lauren IMed me from her brother's screenname to tell me that she was okay and with him. And when she told me they were going to attempt to go home, after much debate, I went with them.

So I'm home now, back on LI, and in complete disbelief that this happened... and that it happened here. Because I never thought that I'd live to see something like this... never thought that it would happen in my lifetime. New York City was attacked today, while I was living there. Hundreds (realistically speaking, probably thousands) of people were killed today in my city alone... to think of all of the people in NYC... and all of the people I know... all of my loved ones are accounted for and safe... but so many people I know are just waiting... waiting to hear if *their* loved ones are okay... I read somewhere "the waiting is the hardest part"... and it is... I learned that today while I was nearly in hysterics waiting to hear if Lauren and Mary were okay... going through that is hard enough... going through that and finding out that your loved one has lost their life... over a horrible, horrible attack...

God I don't even know how to express what I'm feeling. Relief - because I know that I am safe at home with my family, as are Lauren, Janeen, and Mary, and that Anna and Chad and Raina are together and have each other right now and that Alex's uncle, who works in the WTC is home safe... Fear - because I know that this is far from over, and because I know that my dad is in Florida right now and not here with me and all I want to do is hug him right now, and because I don't want to return to the city for classes on Thursday, and because even though my friends are together, they're not with me, and I miss Susan... Love - because I have the greatest group of friends anyone can ask for and I can't even begin to count the number of e-mails, IMs and phone calls I got today from friends that I haven't heard from in days, weeks, or months just making sure I was okay... Pride - Because despite all of my longing to be in Canada right now (and who am I kidding, always...), I am proud to be an American... and we will get through this, no matter what may happen... when I saw Bush on TV tonight, I wasn't looking at him and thinking "Uggh"... I was thinking "That's our president. He's going to get us through this." And I really felt comfort.

God... I don't even know what else to say... except that to anyone who may see this who was even the slightest bit affected by today... which will probably be EVERYONE who reads this... you are in my prayers. All of you.

and now on a lighter note . . .

Continuing the tradition of posting "flashback Friday" posts on every day of the week except Friday . . . I thought I'd share some yearbook pictures from throughout the years ;)

me in 1952


me in 1954


me in 1956


me in 1960


me in 1966


me in 1968


me in 1972


me in 1978



me in 1982


me in 1990


me in 1994



me in 1996


me in 1998



me in 2000


Maybe one (actual Fri)day I'll post some real yearbook pictures. For now though, let me know which one's your favorite ;)

most days i can't put to rest the burning city smoking in my mind

On the 7th anniversary of the scariest day of my life, and the first time that I was in NYC on September 11 in five years, I thought I'd share an entry I posted on a far more personal "blog" on September 11, 2002, while it was still "fresh". I know it's not conventional, but this is my September 11 story, and this is how I choose to remember it.

---

On September 11, 2001, I was on 14th Street, sleeping, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was awoken by Raina, who'd received a phone call from her mother... then a phone call from my father... then a phone call from my own mother.

Despite being in New York City that day, I didn't see the buildings fall. I didn't hear the buildings fall. I didn't even see them burning, except for on TV. Raina and I went upstairs to the highest point in our building to see if we'd be able to see anything, but the windows in the building only faced north... by the time we'd come downstairs, the second tower had fallen. I saw the smoke-filled sky as I fled from the city with Lauren and her friends, but aside from that, I was no closer to the events of that day than the millions of people who watched it on television that day.

See... my real September 11th story isn't about that day... it's about the days afterwards. And it's not about the events... it's about dealing with the events.

I was never fearful for myself that morning. I went back to sleep after Raina told me the news. I went back to sleep after my dad called. It wasn't even 9:00 in the morning... I had more than an hour before I had to get up for class. I was exhausted and not processing the information. The fear started when my mom called, and even then, it wasn't for myself.

I pictured Lauren, walking to student teaching. I pictured Mary, waiting for the bus to take her to campus. And when I tried calling them, I got no answer on either of their phones.

And then the fear really set in.

September 11 was, for me, about finding strength in friendships. About taking the scariest thing that had ever happened to any of us and getting through it together.

The largest dorm at my school was evacuated that day and its residents were unable to return for two weeks. The dorm's residents, which included Mary and Lauren, were put up in hotels, given free textbooks and school supplies, and given money to buy clothing. But because that didn't happen right away, my roommates and I invited them to stay with us.

Nine of us in all... me, Anna, Janeen, Raina, Mary, Lauren, Lauren's roommate Cassie, Lauren's friend Anita, and Anna's friend Ricky. Nine people in a room designed for four. For at least two nights... Mary stuck around on and off for the full two weeks that she was "displaced".

And what do I remember about those days?

I remember making up a song to the tune of Newsies' "Santa Fe" entitled "Water Street" - an ode to the evacuated dorm.

I remember singing Weezer's "Island in the Sun" with Raina, Janeen, and Mary... not all of it... just the "Hip Hip"'s.

I remember eating the sprinkles off of the chocolate chip cookie scented candle I had, just because Anna's friend SWORE that they were real... and he was totally right.

I remember eating lots of "fart food".

And I remember not being scared anymore.

When Raina came into my room a year ago today, I had lived with her for only a week. I knew her a little bit, but she was still "Janeen's roommate" to me... she wasn't yet my friend.

In those days afterwards, that quickly changed. In a matter of days, Raina became one of the closest people in the world to me.

I got to know Anita, who I'd met a few times through Lauren, but never really knew.

I realized that there was not a thing that I wouldn't do for Mary and Lauren.

If nothing else, last September proved to me that out of even the most horrible events, some good could come.

~*~

September 11, 2002 was a little different for me.

I woke up and Lauren was here... she slept over last night and we ate fart food and watched Matthew Perry on the Caroline Rhea show, since Who's the Boss? sadly did not air, and we basically treated it as a regular old sleepover... and when I got up in the morning, it was another one of those "it's just another day" type feelings. (I'd slept through the 8:30am memorial service.)

Of course, walking past Union Square Park on the way to class proved that was not the case... there were people everywhere, dressed in red, white and blue, writing their feelings about the day in chalk art on the ground or on murals or in paintings and just showing that they remembered.

I went to class, like normal. I came home in between class and work and wrote an e-mail to Mary, again, fairly normal. I went to work at 4:00 to discover that due to an "electrical emergency" they were closing at 6 - seemed kind of ironic that they'd be closing early for the first time since I've been working there TODAY... so I went there for a couple hours and had some fun with Alan and Tim and the crew, especially when 6:00 came, the doors were locked, and people STILL insisted on trying them despite the four huge signs across the doors that said the gym was closed... ha.

It was walking home from work and returning to an empty apartment that it started to hit me what today really was - up until then, it had been almost easy to forget.

Today - 9/11/02 - was a day of remembering. Remembering the buildings that had been such a part of my city for so long that I was so used to seeing them that I couldn't even mentally place them back in the skyline after they were gone. Remembering all those who were killed on the planes that day; all those who were killed in the buildings that day; all those who were killed trying to save others that day. Remembering all those who lost loved ones that day. Remembering thinking, "Things will never be the same again after today"... and about how in the past year, life has gone on for so many of us, and things have returned to normal, and how we've grown stronger for that.

And remembering the people who made the recovery process possible.

Remembering the friends who were there for me that day.

Remembering the friends who were there for me in the following days.

Remembering how fortunate I am to have such a group of people in my life, how fortunate I am to have not lost anyone that day, remembering how fortunate I am to have come out of that day stronger than before.

I don't think I said nearly what I wanted to in this entry, but I didn't really know how to say what I wanted to say.

So I'll end it by saying that not a day has gone by in the past year that I haven't thought about how thankful I am... and I will never forget.

~ In Memory Of All Those Lost~

God bless America, land that I love...

flashback friday: i had nothing to do with this video

But in 1996, I was totally obsessed with Mike Legg and thought this was the coolest thing ever. I just found this video saved on this old disk I had from 2004 so apparently I thought it was cool enough to save on my various computers for 8 years. I love hockey.

flashback friday (but a day early because apparently i don't know my days of the week)

Confirmation that I'm losing it, as if repeatedly posting "day of the week" themed blog posts on different days of the week was not enough: I just tried to make my iTunes volume louder with the TV remote.

Um, and I just did it again, less than a minute later and even after just typing that paragraph. What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway. The seeds of my madness were sewn long ago, as evidenced by this 1993 story that I stumbled across from my 6th grade English class while cleaning my room. Perhaps even scarier than the crazy story that the 11-year-old me dreamed up were my teacher's comments: Kerri, you are outrageous! This story is worth publishing. I love the way you tied the story elements together. Your characterizations are superb. I received an A+ for content and an A+ for grammar/spelling/proofreading. The assignment was to write a story about Winnie the Pooh, Alta (that was the name of a girl in my class), the mall, bugs, a gun, and whiskers. This is what I came up with.

---

"Alta Story" - March 29, 1993

I hate my wife Alta. I don't know why I married her. First of all, she is too nice. She lets bugs invade our home, without asking for my permission first. Bugs are pests, and I'd like to put Alta out with them. Second of all, she'll always win an argument because she'll say that if I don't give in and agree with her, she'll step on me. Her threats work too, because she is much taller than me, and she really could step on me. The only reason why I didn't divorce her yet is because I'm unemployed, and she has a pretty good job, so she supports me.

We live in the mall which, in my opinion, is too cheerful. Alta works in Sears, and our home is right outside of Sears. We have the same meal every day (Burger King), partly because I wouldn't touch anything Alta would cook, and partly because we don't have a stove.

One day, Alta came home from work in a bad mood. "Winnie," she said, "I had a hard day at work. Here's twenty bucks. Go buy us dinner."

I took the money, but then I looked carefully at Alta. She was growing whiskers! I'm a bear, and even I don't have whiskers. I screamed.

I left our "house" and ran away as fast as I could, pushing little kids out of the way, and kicking dogs on leashes. I ran straight to the gun shop on the other side of the mall.

"How much is your cheapest gun?" I asked, out of breath.

The gunshop owner couldn't believe his eyes. "You're Winnie the Pooh!"

"Yeah, I am," I said. "Now how much is your cheapest gun?"

"$19.95," the guy said, pointing to a small pellet gun.

"$19.95? But that's too much! I couldn't even afford dinner if I bought that."

"Too bad," the gun shop owner said.

I grabbed a gun off the shelf and checked to see if it was loaded. It was.

"Give it to me for ten bucks or I'll kill you," I said.

The gun shop owner was shaking with fear. "Here, you can have it for free," he said, shoving the pellet gun into my hands. "Uh, have a nice day!"

I ran out of the store as fast as I could. I heard a kid say, "Mommy, it's Winnie the Pooh with a gun!" The mother screamed and ran off.

When I reached our home, Alta wasn't there. I was mad because I was all ready to kill her. In my anger, I squashed every bug of hers I could find.

I left my home, and checekd every store in the mall looking for Alta. I found her in a drug store, buying razors.

I pulled her out of the store and said, "Alta, shave your whiskers or I'll kill you." Alta screamed and ran to the payphones. She locked herself in a booth and made a call. I sat and waited for her to come out so I could kill her. But she wouldn't come out.

Ten minutes later, the police came and arrested me. They took me to jail.

Considering that Alta lived, but I never saw her again, it was a happy ending for all of us.

flashback friday: travis's "kodak moment" pick-up line reminded me of my 5th grade crush

"Writing the Autobiography" essay, Spring 2003

To say that I was boy crazy when I was in elementary school is an understatement. I was six years old when I developed my first crush. It wasn’t on a real boy, of course. My love was a celebrity. I’d see him on television and my young heart would skip a beat. I was in love. And who was this man, you ask? Not a New Kid On the Block. Not Uncle Jesse from Full House – of course he was dreamy, but not my true love. No, the man that I was in love with was Mark Summers, from Nickelodeon’s Double Dare. I obviously didn’t have very high standards in first grade, but back then I thought he was beautiful. I have pictures from my seventh birthday party, standing in the bowling alley smiling at the camera with my hair in braided pigtails and proudly sporting a bright pink Double Dare t-shirt.

My taste in boys improved with age, however. In second grade, when I caught my first glimpse of the twenty-something who lived around the block from me, I told my friends at school in wonder how he was “even cuter than Mark Summers!” And then came John B. He was in Mrs. Laporte’s class, and my best friend Kim and I would sit at the lunch table closest to him in the cafeteria, giggling about how cute he was. Imagine my ecstasy when a girl in my class played the game MASH for me and it revealed that John and I were going to get married! And a third grader who claimed to be psychic told me that he’d had a vision of me marrying a boy with brown eyes. And John had brown eyes! I was in love. I spent the entire summer after second grade writing him letters weekly. He didn’t reply to even one of them, and my eight-year-old heart was broken. But it all ended up being okay because two years later, he ended up my square dance partner and my boyfriend, for an entire week. I was the envy of the entire fourth grade. But like all great romances of the twentieth century, it did not last. By the next week, John was square dancing with Stephanie, I was square dancing with Kevin, and the love that we’d had for one another was a distant memory.

But nobody could compare to Paul. Paul was the epitome of ten-year-old dreaminess. He had it all. The blond hair, the blue eyes – he was the Zack Morris of the fifth grade, and everyone loved him. The girls all wanted him and the boys all wanted to be him. I know that’s cliché, but there’s no other way to say it because he was just one of those boys. Even my mom’s youngest sister, my twenty-four year old Aunt Ruth, would giggle with me when I’d tell her how cute he was, saying, “If that boy was fifteen years older...” Okay, yeah, my family’s sick, but now do you see how cute Paul must have been? He lived down the street from me, and even my mom thought that I should marry him. She always teased me about having a crush on him, which I denied the entire year to her, but boy did I have it bad. At school, my friends and I came up with a secret name for him so that we could talk about how cute he was without anyone knowing. His name? Cody. Why Cody? Well, because every time we saw him, it was a “Kodak Moment”. Oh how I loved that boy, and it was obviously meant to be because a computerized love compatibility game at the local amusement park, Adventureland, revealed that we were made for each other after I inputted our names and our birthdays. And I had an edge over the other girls who loved him too. Back in first grade, he had fought with another boy over me on the playground during recess. I knew we belonged together. Inspired by the movie My Girl (well, convinced that Paul would die a tragic death by bee stings before we got to fulfill our destiny to be together), I wrote a confession of my love to him while I was at my best friend Kelli’s house. But alas, I never had the guts to give him my letter, and after a summer spent pining away over him, I entered middle school and was introduced to two other elementary schools worth of boys. Eventually, Paul ended up at a private school anyway, and his presence in my life was reduced to memory and the few Kodak moments that had actually been captured in pictures.

Things changed when I got older, of course. No longer did I obsess over game show hosts and classmates. No, college came, and I found a new love: hockey players. My love for hockey players had grown slowly but surely over the course of the previous six years, starting on a small scale (little crushes on my brother’s teammates) and gradually growing to the extremes of borderline stalking Hartford Wolf Pack AHL players. By the time I hit college, however, I had calmed down a bit and set my sites on the slightly more attainable college hockey players, and of course, the way to do this was by managing NYU’s team.

Okay, fine. I guess nothing really had changed. There were still the nicknames. The boy who walked around a bit too freely in the locker room whenever I entered was “Not So Ugly Naked Guy” (sometimes N-Sung for short). And there was “Yellow Hat Boy” and “Abercrombie Boy” – there were just so many of them, and they were all so cute!

By my sophomore year in college, I had expanded my horizons a bit. Oh sure, I was still enthralled by my boys (that year, we acquired a player who I am still convinced is one of the most physically perfect human beings to ever walk the face of this planet – I swear, that boy is single-handedly responsible for global warming, but that is another story), but I had also discovered the (literal) beauty of opposing teams. I’ll never forget that first night in Poughkeepsie that December, gazing at wonder with my fellow manager, Mary, at the Marist players that kept walking by. It became clear within minutes why the team was called the Red Foxes – DAMN were they foxy! Mary and I made no secret of our attraction to the entire Marist team, particularly their star defenseman. NYU ended up playing Marist in the first round of league playoffs that year, and I can only imagine what the Rex Foxes must have thought when they walked by our team to go to their locker room and were met with thirty pairs of watchful eyes, looking them up and down. “Oh, come on, you think those guys are hotter than us?” one Violet asked us in disbelief. Of course I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but you know what they say, if you ask a stupid question… And that was only Marist. The next week, when we were in Indianapolis for Nationals, we had the captain of our team ready to set us up with the hotties from the Central Connecticut State University team, who happened to be dining in the very same T.G.I. Fridays that we were in. A year later, we asked the cute backup goaltender for SUNY – Albany to take a picture with us. With NYU, Marist, Central Connecticut, and Albany all in the same league (and let’s not forget those Siena hotties), it was easy to forget that I was supposed to be watching the game and not the guys.

I’d like to tell you that with less than three weeks left in my college career, as I stand on the brink of the real world, that I’ve matured. I’d like to tell you that I look back on all of the MASH games, and the nicknames, and the crushes and I’m embarrassed to think of how stupid and silly it all really is. But the truth is, I’m not. I look back on my boy crazy past and a smile is instantly brought to my face. It’s just part of who I am.

As for the future? Well, nothing is certain. But I can pretty much guarantee that I will be marrying Dan and living with him, our four kids, and our pet goat in an apartment in Pennsylvania, right next door to our best friends Mary and [______ *name omitted so Mary doesn't kill me!*], their two kids, and their pet turtle. And whenever I start to question my fate, I remember back to that day in second grade when the clairvoyant third grader prophesized my marrying a boy with brown eyes. I smile, reminding myself that MASH would never lie, and I go back to coming up with names for my kids.