Chicken Soup for the Soul of America (26 page)

The day of my daughter's birth will always be connected with memories and memorials of death, but on 4:41
P.M.
on Tuesday, as images of death engulfed our minds, God made his way into the world . . . in our midst . . . among us . . . as he did so many years ago . . . in the image of a child. My friend shared a very poignant thought, reminding me that although the date of Anna Belle's birth might forever be associated with the events of that day, it would be a blessing to know that it might also be the same day that marked the beginning of a rebirth of an awareness of God in our nation, in our schools and in our homes.

On the way to the church to write these words, I heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” being played on the radio. Flags hung on the front doors of many houses on both sides of the road—one was even hand-drawn by a child. I have to trust that we gained a greater allegiance not only to the flag this day, but that we also became aware of our need as a nation to truly be “under God.” If July 4 is our Independence Day, perhaps September 11 should become our “Dependence Day”—a day in which we as a nation come to realize that our collective hope, future and lives were placed more securely in his hands.

I, too, began a new life on Tuesday, just as my daughter, Anna Belle, began a new life.

And just as Anna Belle, I was pulled from a place of safety, security and peace into a tragic, scary, unpredictable and hostile world.

Even though Anna Belle was born into uncertainty, she was immediately placed into the hands of a father whose main desire is to protect her, provide for her and promise her a rich future. Her story is my story . . . and yours. We are all frail, tiny and vulnerable, and our physical lives come with no guarantees. Yet that part of us most carefully created in his image is safe in the hands of a protecting, providing and promising Father. September 11 will always, in one special way, be a celebration of life for this particular father. My prayer is that history will look back and one day celebrate it as a day of renewed life toward our Father.

Another friend sent me these words in a simple but powerful note:

On a day in which everyone is asking, “Why would God ever let this happen?” perhaps we should look at you holding your daughter and ask the very same question.

David Skidmore

The Mustard Seed

S
eeds of faith are always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth.

Susan Taylor

In the darkest of days, we sometimes have to dig deep for the faith that will carry us through. It's not always easy, as I recently learned.

Like all Americans, September 11, 2001, is a day that I will never forget. My day started out with a promise to clean the house with my dear husband. Following the long illness of a loved one, we had neglected our most monotonous chores. It was time now to engage in this long-overdue task as even the cat was sneezing from all the dust.

This Tuesday we were up early and worked diligently, even skipping our lunch. At 1
P.M.
the phone rang. Our son-in-law was working at Roosevelt Field, a large shopping mall here on Long Island, and he was calling to ask if he could stay with us if he couldn't get across the bridge to his home in Westchester that night.

My husband spoke to him, and I watched as his face turned white. “What's wrong?” I asked.

“Anne, quick, turn on the television set. New York City has been attacked!” he yelled.

“What? Who? Where?” I stammered.

“Just turn the set on,” he repeated.

I ran to the living room, put on the TV and watched in horror. I stood in shock, watching the recast of the Twin Towers collapsing, the clouds of smoke billowing skyward, people running for their lives, screaming in terror. America was under attack! Soon, I started crying. My entire body shook. I kept saying, “Oh my God,” until I couldn't believe it was my own voice I heard. My husband held me, and we sat in silence for the next hour, listening to the tragic reports. It was unreal, a science fiction movie—it just couldn't have happened to our beautiful New York City. “All the people who worked in the towers, the rescue workers, the police, the firemen, all lost,” I cried.

We quickly began to account for our own family members—who was where, who might be at risk. After a while, we discovered they were all safe. In the next few days we accounted for all our close friends and were extremely grateful. We heard stories from neighbors, friends and family about how the attack had affected them.

We continued to watch the reports, praying for a miracle for the missing. It did not come. I fell into a depression, becoming deeply saddened by the loss of so many, enraged at the destruction of the city where I had been born and raised. When Sunday came, my husband dressed for church and I felt the tears come to my eyes. “I can't go with you,” I said. He went alone. I stayed and lamented the sheer terror I felt within myself.
What kind of world are we living in?
I thought.
Our poor grandchildren. Is this their inheritance: a world gone mad?

For the next several Sundays, my husband attended services by himself. I tried to pray, I tried to have faith; it just wouldn't come. I pushed myself each day just to get out of bed. I felt empty, lost and very confused.

I'm not sure why, but on October 7 I told my husband that I wanted to go to church with him. He smiled and said he was pleased, and that I would be happy to know that Father Jim would be saying Mass that day. He knew I enjoyed this priest's down-to-earth sermons. The theme of the service was the need for us to rekindle our convictions. It spoke of having faith if only the size of a mustard seed. Now, a mustard seed is very small, almost difficult to see on a normal basis. I cried through the entire service, yet when we left the church I felt a new resolve.

That night I told my husband that I needed to show him something. From a box yellowed with age, I removed a small, round glass ball the size of a marble. I put it in his hand, and he asked, “What's this?”

I replied, “My mother gave that to me thirty-seven years ago when the baby died.”

An infant son had passed away from a lung infection and I had gone into a deep depression. I couldn't fathom the reason that God would allow something that unthinkable to happen. I lost all my faith and stayed away from church. Nothing was real for me at that time and no one could reach me to help. My heart was broken, my desire to live lost. My dear mother had pressed the small object that my husband now held in his hand into mine one evening. “My darling daughter,” she said, “all you've faced recently has been tragic, and there are no answers to the questions of why, but you must go on. I know it's hard, almost impossible, but if you can have faith, if only the size of that mustard seed, you will begin to heal.”

I stared at this person that I loved with all my heart and wondered how she expected me to believe what she was saying. She put the small glass object in my hand and said, “Just try, Anne.”

That evening I continued to roll the ball over and over in my palm. I concentrated on the tiny brown speck in the middle of it. I felt myself get stronger. I felt the desire to believe that things would return to normal, that life would hold joy for me once again.
I can have faith the size of that speck. I can do that, I can,
I kept repeating it to myself.

Thirty-seven years later, I held the round sphere that held the mustard seed in my hand. I prayed that night and once again, I felt stronger. We all need to hold on to the thought that we can also have the faith, the spirit, the resolve, if only the size of that small speck, to see us through this crisis. I know it won't be easy, it never has been. However, in our country's history, our darkest moments become our finest hours.

Anne Carter

Ground Zero

Three months after September 11, 2001, I found myself walking the perimeter of Ground Zero in lower Manhattan with four other women. My cousin, Karen, and I had flown from Wisconsin to New York to attend the opening of my daughter Jeanne's art show at a gallery in mid-Manhattan. Karen, a nurse, wanted to see Ground Zero because she planned to return for three weeks as a Red Cross volunteer to help care for the police and firefighters who would be working there twenty-four hours a day for at least another year.

On that clear crisp December day, Jeanne, Karen and I invited my dear friend, Mary Ann, the executive editor of
Guideposts Magazine,
a New Yorker by love and by choice, to join us. Mary Ann and I have been friends since 1982, have stayed at each other's homes and are counting the years until her retirement so we can travel together and nourish our friendship more often.

The fifth woman with us that Sunday was Ellen, who taught art with my daughter at Long Island University. Ellen lived in an apartment just blocks from the World Trade Center area and actually witnessed both planes crashing into the towers and the buildings imploding. Like hundreds of others she dialed 911 the moment it happened.

None of the five of us had been to Ground Zero before that day and somehow we knew it was something we needed to do as a group. We walked and walked around the perimeter, stared, wondered, shook our heads, shed tears and watched the firefighters working to put out the fires deep underground. We breathed in the acrid air that filtered up from below the streets and smelled like burning plastic. We saw hundreds of people filing by St. Paul's Chapel where tall fences were installed to hold thousands of flowers, notes, letters, posters and the pouring out of love and grief from a nation of people who cannot comprehend what happened on those sixteen acres in New York City's oldest section.

We walked down the street where a half-dozen huge dump trucks lined up to take their turn removing the steel and the ashes of the dead. We five women understood that the air was filled with toxic chemicals and perhaps everyone should wear masks to protect themselves but we didn't. Somehow it seemed that if we physically breathed it in, we would understand it better. Ellen mentioned that by breathing we became a part of the dead.

Ground Zero is a holy place. People are quiet, respectful. On one narrow street where we had to step over broken sidewalks and makeshift wooden walkways, there were a dozen handmade signs begging, “Please, no photographs or videos.” But around the corner, down another street there were people taking snapshots and filming the hubbub in and around the gaping hole. The mind cannot comprehend such devastation, nor remember the details, so photos are necessary.

I wanted to remember the coarse, black, wet ashes in front of the church two blocks from where the towers stood. I wanted to remember the chain-link fences that protected the workers and the people who flocked to that neighborhood.

Most of all, I need to remember how it felt to walk south a few blocks to Battery Park at the very tip of Manhattan where we could see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. We five women stood on the dock where people board the ferry that takes them to the statue and then on to the immigration museum on Ellis Island. We arrived at the park just at sunset. The colors over the ocean screamed with red-orange brilliance as if all was well in New York.

There was a huge photographic mural covering a building at the dock with enormous photos of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, reminding visitors of lives dedicated to peace. To the left was the sunset, the statue, the ocean. To the right, a view of the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, New Amsterdam, the oldest section of New York, where the Trade Center for the world once stood. Only the skyline was missing its two most dramatic pieces. The gaping space between buildings was obscene, unfathomable, especially if you'd been to New York before and could remember exactly where the Towers stood. Sixteen acres, gone.

As we five women took in that sunset, punctuated with the Statue of Liberty to the south, and then looked north to where the giant towers once stood, each of us experienced muddled thoughts about the world and about our lives before and after September 11. To see that much death and destruction up close, or to live and work near where America was attacked, does something to your soul.

As we walked toward the subway, my daughter put her arm around my waist. I reached for Mary Ann's hand. Karen and Ellen walked close together, sharing their feelings about life after September 11.

We five women in our thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, together for one afternoon, represented a scattering of different relationships. But for three hours that day we were sisters who experienced awe, fear, anger, depression, amazement, loyalty, patriotism and the friendship that comes when people share their emotions. We saw a skyline that was different than before. But we also saw the Statue of Liberty and the sunset. We saw wet ashes and mangled steel on one side of a street and a sunset of enormous brilliance and beauty on the other. It was good to see them both together and to know that even though the skyline of New York will never be the same, the work and hope arising from the ashes in lower Manhattan is the stuff of liberty and sunrises and sunsets so beautiful you simply can't define them. You need to go there to understand.

Patricia Lorenz

Make It Green

If there is to be a memorial, let it not be of stone and steel. Fly no flag above it, for it is not the possession of a nation but a sorrow shared with the world.