Dates, numbers, and anniversaries

Dates, European and American usage

When I traveled to Europe in the Spring of 1987, The Wall was still intact.  I discovered that year that the Europeans wrote their dates as day, then month, then year, whereas in the USA where I grew up, we write them as month, then day, then year.

When my parents passed away, I inherited this little trinket, a tiny chip of the Berlin Wall, that came down on November 9th, 1989.  At some point in the last 20 years, the coincidence of 9/11 and 11/9 occurred to me, being kind of a numbers geek person.  This morning, I just happened to glance down at my watch when it happened to read 9:11.  Which made me think of "The Wall" and the date coincidence.

Whether I wanted this year's 20th anniversary to affect me or not, the memory of the fall of the twin towers and the downing of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and the flight that hit the Pentagon building in Washington, DC... it was destined to have an impact on me.

I could feel it building as the news channels advertised their upcoming coverage.  It has been a difficult few news weeks, what with Afghanistan, my son being a veteran of the global war on Terrorism.  I was thinking I might just avoid the news entirely today.  Yet, like so many, I was drawn to the moving ceremony of the bereaved, reading names, with soft music behind it.  This quiet remembrance has been more meaningful than any amount of commentary and rhetoric might be.

Before 2001, September 11th was...

to my own family, September 11th was the anniversary of my parents' wedding.  By 2001, both of them were gone, mom in 1996, dad in 1999.  Dad survived to see what would have been their Golden Anniversary.  Mom did not.  Still, as family stories go, we celebrated February 13th far more than we did September 11th.  

February 13th was the proposal story.  Dad had moved across the state to take work, and had to be back at work on Valentine's day.  But he had made the trek to visit his mother and his sweetheart on the weekend.  February 13th was Sunday.  As Dad would tell the tale, he figured she'd be able to pack up and in a couple of weeks, he'd have a bride to bring home to the city where he now worked.

Wrong!  His mother in law to be was not going to be done out of a proper wedding, since she herself had eloped.  So it was September by the time the little ceremony was held.  They borrowed a model A Ford to take a trip to the mountains in Colorado for a honeymoon.  By the way, it is gorgeous in Colorado this time of year, and we were treated at just about every family holiday to photos of my mother as a young bride, feeding the chipmunks along the mountain roadside.

Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001

As for most folks, it took a while before the reality of what was going on "out East" sunk in.  When I heard on the news on the way to work that a plane had flown into one of the towers, my brain went to "Cessna, pilot error".  Don't tell me that most of us didn't have that as our first image.  That was corrected the moment I got into the office.  The whole workday was disrupted.  A TV was obtained, and we rotated in and out of watching coverage in the office where it was placed.

In my own mind, several thoughts battled for uppermost:  gratitude that my parents did not live to see their anniversary besmirched, the foreboding that our nation would not let such an attack stand, that there would be a war, along with the most scary thought a mother might have at such a time:  "my son is 17".  As the numbers of those who lost their lives mounted, a great sense of compassion arose in me, thinking back to the year we lost my mom, my mother in law, and my brother in law, all within a single 90 day time period... I thought of the thousands of families going through that kind of gut-punch of grief... all at once.  

When I got home from work, my son emerged from his basement bedroom to pronounce, in the midst of his own teenaged angst of growing up:  "those people did nothing wrong... they just got up today and went to work".

It was five years before my son signed up and put on a uniform, and I was proud of him for making this choice, but also, like any mom, hoping for his safety though his service, all the

while knowing this was never guaranteed.  He did in fact, come home "in one piece", and serve out his time, but there is that time in between, when moms have their prayers and their bargains with God balancing, like spinning plates.  You don't even know how clenched up you have become until his boots are back on US soil again.

I won't go into all the "side effects" of a service member who goes to war, even when they come back physically intact.  Those of you who know, know.  Those of you who don't know... accept your blessings.

Choosing your attitude:  the pep talk

As most of us know, Spark refugees that we are, we have choices to make when bad things happen.  Because they will.  There will be joy, and there will be sorrow.  We can use the hard times to learn to be helpless, or we can use them to learn to be strong.  And we can change our minds about which use of our personal story will prevail, too, as time goes on.  No one can predict just what wake up moment will occur or when, to click into place the strength that is a potential in each of us.

There can be multiples of these wake ups.  There can be times when we become weary, and slide back, only to re-start later.  Some turning points may come in conversations with others, or reading one another's thoughts or stories.  Some may come as quiet gifts of inspiration, a random thought.  But these turning points are all gifts.  They may spur us to educate ourselves, to try a new strategy, or just plain enable us to act or to continue to act in a way that supports our health, mental, physical, and spiritual.

May we all take this one and only Saturday, September 11, 2021, and make, in it, the best choices we can manage, right where we are.  What we do today is sufficient for today. We are worth every effort we put forward, and in so doing, we honor those who have lost their lives or a loved one... we honor their sacrifice in taking care of ourselves, and in taking care of one another.  Spark on!  ✨💖🎇🔥