It was the fourth day of school in Duluth, Minnesota.
Sophie had walked to her first-grade class at Grant Elementary School, just blocks above our East Hillside home, and I was driving Jane to her job as an instructional designer for United Healthcare, at a 1,000-employee campus just off Rice Lake Road.
On the way, I saw some old, fruit-laden apple trees on the hill in front of the county’s nursing home and made a mental note to stop on the way back to gather some fruit. Isaac was chattering in his car seat and National Public Radio just finished a news roundup as we dropped Jane off. A short news bulletin about a plane straying over New York City cut in, but I switched the radio off.
I was looking for free and wild food to gather because I was no longer earning a steady paycheck. Jane was pregnant with our third child, due 3 months later on Dec. 11, and we’d determined we could survive on one salary if we were frugal. I had a stash of plastic grocery bags in the car and brought some out to the trees. I picked the tart, gnarly apples as quickly as I could, knowing Isaac’s patience would quickly wane. Twenty minutes and five bags later, we got back into the car and I switched on the radio to hear a chaotic discussion between newscasters and reporters on the ground trying to sort out how a plane, or possibly even planes, crashed into the World Trade Center.
The more I heard, the faster I drove, wheeling into our alley and throwing open my car door. I hoisted Isaac out of his car seat, opened the fence gate and plopped him in the sandbox as I ran into the house and switched on the TV. There I saw the burning towers, the people running on the ground, the bodies falling from the buildings. I couldn’t tear myself away, even as I realized I was neglecting Isaac outside. Finally I went out, plucked him off of the upside down wheelbarrow he was climbing on, and brought him inside, to his loud, angry complaining. Beyond the practicality of wanting him in the house so I could keep an eye on him, I felt in some vague way that he might be unsafe. I got a shiver like I used to get when we talked too much about “fallout drills” in school or when I peered too intently into our basement bomb shelter when I was a kid.
Not knowing what else to do, I started making applesauce. I found myself glued to the TV until its rawness drove me to snap it off and turn on NPR, which was finally getting up to speed on the story. I peeled and cored apples as Isaac played and jabbered. I gathered pint and quart canning jars and rings, sanitized them in the dishwasher and began grinding cooked apples in the food mill, tasting the finished mash and adding lots of sugar to counter the tart flavor. The project became a refuge, something I could return to between bouts of staring at the TV, turning the radio on and off and calling Jane at work. She said she’d had coworkers in her telecommuter work team who were kept from flying to and from work appointments and some who were supposed to be in transit who hadn’t been heard from.
The picture became clearer and uglier: four hijacked planes, Twin Towers destroyed, an attack on the Pentagon, a fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania cornfield. Somehow, this felt personal to me, personal enough that I cried several times, in anger, frustration and some fear. What are we doing, I wondered, bringing another child into this sick, violent world? What did we as a nation do to inspire such hatred and simultaneously, what did we as a nation do to deserve such unspeakable horror? It seemed somehow trivial, yet right, to be preserving food on this day. In my gut, gathering food felt life-sustaining in the face of this unknown threat.
I felt so agitated that night that I started running, something I’d only dabbled with before. I ran more than 3 miles, hard, along Seventh Avenue, Skyline Parkway and Enger Park, so hard that I was gasping and my sides were hurting at the end. It dulled the agitation a little. What can I do? I wondered halfway through. Then the answer came as I pushed up a hill: get stronger.
We went to bed very late that night and slept fitfully. I woke up at one point thinking — “Whew, that was just a dream. ” Then I had the disorienting realization that what I thought I’d been dreaming was reality. I could neither sleep nor awaken to escape it. Then, the questions started over: why? What are we doing? What can I do — questions that continue for me today, eight years later.
