Far and Away

It was my fourth time back from the lunch room that morning, the only workspace with a tv. I had to see. The second time I watched the footage of the black smoke, a plane flew past on the backside, but not really. I thought it was a replay from a different angle but it was another plane crashing into the other tower. I returned again and again to the lunchroom to watch, trying to make sense of it. 

At the time we lived in a rural county seven states away, too far for anyone to think this could happen to us. The afternoon school carpool line for picking up Leo at our neighborhood elementary school was short where only a handful of students and fewer teachers remained searching for the next car. 

“I see folks began picking up early today.” I say to Miss Herbert as I pull up and she opens the back door so Leo can get in. 

“Yeah, a very different day today,” she replied. 

The usual ride home ended with our neighbor Mr. Jorge calling out from his porch after we parked, “Who would have believed it? There are crazy folks everywhere.”

“Yeah, Mom. We saw the towers fall down.”

“That was something to see. How did you see it?” Trying not to sound alarmed that he should not have seen such a thing. 

“The teacher turned it on. We watched.”

“Miss Herbert? During class, the whole day?” There was panic in my voice but I slowed it down and asked lightly.

“No, we were in art class,” Leo says, like I should know this.

“I wouldn’t have thought they would let you watch something like that,” Mr. Jorge pipes up.

“Right.” I say quickly to end the conversation, “See you, later, Mr. Jorje.”

Sure enough. I checked his schedule and my first grader had been in music when the news hit and for 30 minutes after. So the teacher had turned on the tv and replayed the scenes.

“Did the art teacher say anything about what was going on?” Curiosity had gotten the best of me.

“She said it was an emergency and we had to be quiet and still. She said it was in New York City, not near us.”

“It was not near us, but it happened in our country.”

“Miss Herbert showed us on the map.” Then,” Mom, do those people hate us?”

“Hate is a big little word.” The day had been overwhelming, too much for this four-letter word. “We’ll have to keep up with the news to figure out why this happened.”

My explanation of the day’s events may not have meant much, but I needed him to not start coming to conclusions just yet. It was too much to take in. This was not a video game. Eventually, our watching the disaster became an endless background in our living room that evening. 

His dad diverted attention, “You know that’s not going to happen to us, right?”

Leo shrugged with “OK.”

We participated in school ceremonies that acknowledged Patriot Day and celebrated with Mr. Jorge as his grandson joined the Army. Mr. Jorge boasted, “He’s going to fight the goddamn Taliban.”

The following year, getting on a flight for a holiday visit with family at my sister’s place brought Leo to a complete shutdown in the airport, at the gate, as he locked up and would not board. He was more frightened by his own reaction to getting on the plane than we were annoyed by the other passengers and airline staff. The next day we drove and got there in the middle of dinner that Thanksgiving. That had been the beginning of us using car travel as our main mode of transportation. Leo was content with long weekends at home with his uncle rather than accompany us when I travelled with his dad.

In the eighth grade we watched a documentary on the twin towers, he was troubled but fascinated that what looked like debris falling from the upper floors was really bodies. People who had jumped? People who had been sucked out? This was about the time when we began to notice he would avoid closed spaces, even the shopping mall with the balconies and skylights. He maneuvered his life  away from locker rooms, long winding hallways and underground spaces. The puzzling and questioning began, how do you decide how you will die, how do you figure your last moments, what does it feel like to suffocate?

He seemed to find solace in standing in a breeze or turning to the wind and holding on while speeding along on the back of his uncle’s motorcycle.

Leo was arrested, senior year, as he and his friend were walking through the neighborhood back to our house to play video games and spend the night. Neither had resisted. The ordeal scarred him, the terror of riding in the confines of the patrol car and a few hours of sitting in the windowless cell had become his nightmares. The courtroom for the hearing with all solid doors and  no windows was a source of agitation. He had received a full ride to the Air Force Academy, becoming a pilot while seeking the mysteries of flight. 

Somehow being in the confines of the cockpit of a plane liberated him. Waiting until it was necessary to board, he was always the last pilot in his seat. What he learned from the therapy sessions while he was a teanager and from our family mindfulness practices had become go-to techniques he used to quell the approaching anxiety when he had to wait at the gate or on the tarmac before the tower gave permission to move. The movement down the runway and through air with the speed of flying into hell. The control. He had found peace in controlling the stability in turbulence, the flow of the incline and decline, the colors of the horizon.

For multiple views (and sometimes a balcony) he had lived in corner apartments and later a quaint home with a perched view of the valley. He stayed away from clubs and bars and Las Vegas. Smokey places or a date with smoke on her  breath were major annoyances. He didn’t consider towering buildings or cities that housed them. Keeping the fear at bay by being able to see far and ponder wide.