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9/11 All Over Again
So I’m on line at Costco, the mood heavy all around me, as I buy peanut butter and pinto beans in case we’re quarantined due to coronavirus, and it’s 9/11 all over again.
It’s not our first time back to planning for attack, of course. There have been too many storms of war and weather throughout the past eighteen years to count, and my daughters who were just six and one when the towers fell are now in their twenties.
My intense nurturing hormones of young motherhood have given way to menopause, which free me from complete and total paralysis in aisle eight of my local Publix supermarket as happened all those years ago and perhaps, I guess, strengthen me for the eldercare responsibilities that now tug on me daily.
Time has mellowed me in some ways and made me more accepting of life and death and the inevitable fallibility of humanity. However, I still believe that dignity and kindness can forge a new path forward and our best days as a species are yet to come.
And, yes, I know you are out there, young mothers, perhaps far more prepared than I ever was for the constant instability of seemingly-everything because your children dodge the bullets of online bullying and…
