An excerpt from my memoir, Finding My Way Home
I ran away once.
June. 2002. Though I lived on my own, had no significant other, no children, and no responsibility to anyone other than myself, I still needed to run far, far away. What I was running from, I wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps it was reality, perhaps it was memory. Perhaps it was myself. Maybe it was a bit of all three.
I arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana. Night had fallen, and I was tired and hungry. The green and red neon sign of Applebee’s lured me in with its promise of comfort food. I spoke into my microphone for the final time that evening. I want to talk to another human being because I’m weighted by my thoughts from this long day on the road. I feel confused about myself—who I am and who I want to be. I followed the routes detailed on my maps, and my car never veered off course, but I am completely lost. Somehow, I am feeling more like a stranger in my own skin.
My original intent was to interview average Americans while driving across the country. Why? Because since the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11, only 10 months ago, my life had been consumed by an edginess I had never before experienced.
I hit stop and packed the tape recorder and my feelings away in the glove compartment. I walked toward the restaurant excited to find the courage to meet some new people. The crowd—complete strangers to me—were the spitting image of the patrons that I might see at a Friday’s back in Massachusetts. Had I really even traveled at all?
The whiff of smoking beef on the grill melted in harmony with the sugary scent of ketchup spinning through the air. The noise of the restaurant reminded me of a middle school band practice. No one was in tune, but everyone was making lots of noise. Somehow it was inviting, and I wanted to join in on the cacophony of chaos, but the music scratched to a halt when the hostess asked, “Just one?”
I scanned the dining room, making mental notes of the crowd. The clink of glasses and clatter of silverware bashing on plates eased back into symphony. For a split second, I thought I recognized my father. I saw a man with peppery white hair pulled back into a ponytail. The top of his head, too, was bald, and like my dad, he made do with the horseshoe of growth that remained.
The woman across from him, however, was not my mother. This voluptuous woman with faux auburn red hair (which might have been white by now if she had let her natural color grow), wore bangs—big bangs that curved in a loose curl and met her eyebrows while the rest of her hair whirled about in waves nearly reaching her chest. Her loosely fitted, pastel tank top rested softly on her roundness. A pair of large, circle-framed glasses covered the top half of her face, and she gnawed on chicken wings.
They drank beer and hardly spoke to each other. I felt as if I knew them, as if I grew up with them, like I was miles away but hadn’t really left home. I wanted to ask, “How is Aunt Jeannie?” or “Is Ricky graduating this year?” They probably would have answered, but it would not have been about my aunt or my Ricky.
At the bar a collection of men dressed in acid-washed jean shorts, sleeveless t-shirts, and baseball caps watched a game while drinking Miller Lite. Across from them, I discovered my safety zone: a few empty seats just far enough away from a man who also dined alone, likely a solitary businessman, with his burger.
“Thanks, I’ll just sit at the bar,” I said to the hostess.
The patrons might have noticed me briskly walking to the tall bar seats and slinking into my stool, sweeping my skirt beneath my bottom so as not to have my bare skin touch the seat. My elbows rested on the bar, and I casually looked left. Perhaps someone watched as I re-adjusted my hair into a cleaner ponytail. I tugged at my tank top to be sure it did not grip those imaginary rolls that torture me every time I sit down, then dug through the contents of my purse. There must be something in here that I need. I looked desperately for nothing, anything—something to give me a purpose. My hand found my trusted journal and pen and I laid them on the bar surface.
I adjusted my ponytail again and offered a limp wave and coy smile to the bartender. He nodded, recognizing my slight uneasiness, scurried over and stood before me with a warm smile. With the exchange of a few words, I had secured my meal. My tension soothed a bit, knowing that a beer and salad were on the way.
I reached for my journal and pen and began to write. I feel eyes watching me from every angle, and I’m trying to use my peripheral vision to confirm whether I’m actually being watched. Am I a crazy person? Just keep writing. Look busy.
Absolutely no one was watching.
Do men have these feelings of anxiety when they eat at a bar alone? Is that businessman worried about being watched right now? I wonder if he’s married. If I were married, or at least in a relationship right now, would I feel so uncomfortable being alone?
Trying to see through the lens of another’s eyes, I envisioned myself slightly hunched and focused on the words my pen put to the page. I paused from writing in an attempt to exist in that place for that moment. Nervously, I grabbed the drink menu and read. Maybe the bartender was watching as I scrutinized the laminated card searching for a cocktail heavy on the courage. Then I somehow managed to peel my eyes from the page to see that there was nothing intimidating about any of these people. My fear is all in my head, I wrote, returning my eyes to the safety of the page before me. No eyes are on me, yet still I cower in fear.
I found myself looking again. Is there a ring? I looked to see if a band of gold shone on the left hand of Mr. Businessman. He’d be much easier to talk to if there were a ring. His being married would remove any presumption that I might be hitting on him. He’s safer than the collection of men across the bar because he’s alone too. Don’t let him catch you looking at him. What’s wrong with a glance? What’s wrong with a hello? Just talk to him. Engage in an exchange of words. That’s why you are here.
Instead, I worried that he might find me odd if I interrogated him on how he felt 10 months after the tragedy of 9/11. These were the thoughts that consumed me. “Why do they want to kill us?” “Why do they hate us?” I didn’t want small talk, I wanted answers to big questions about the world around me. I wanted to fix what was wrong with me so that I could help to fix the ails of the world. Has he bought into the gas mask craze and built an underground shelter in preparation for our being wiped off the earth?
But that evening, I sat mute, learning nothing about anyone and growing more frustrated with myself. I wanted to blame my sudden state of timidity on the landscape. I decided that the dearth of visual stimulation on the highways between Boston and Indiana had thwarted my external thoughts and forced me to grow introspective. The result: I was now an introvert. Thanks Ohio.
My shyness not only confounded me but contorted the very purpose of my journey in only a moment’s time. I was speechless. A deep breath reminded me that I was indeed alive, and for a moment I flirted with courage, straightened my spine, and again looked up. No luck. I shrunk again and clutched my pen, my only companion for the night.
#
September. 2001. A high school in Massachusetts where I teach. The senior boys had embraced a sort of Dulce et decorum est attitude with arrogance. American flags decorated the hallways in place of school mascots. he upperclassmen were unabashed in their desire to retaliate. Listening to conversations in the cafe or during study periods, it seemed that many teenagers in my school had morphed into nationalistic militants aimed at destroying the enemy.
“We need to go to Christie’s (a local convenience store) and wreck that place,” one senior boy screamed across the cafeteria to his friends.
“Yeah. Let’s teach those Pakistanis,” another responded, oblivious to their misdirected hatred.
“Guys, you need to take a step back and understand what you are saying and why you are saying it. You can’t walk around talking like that,” I said.
I was 28 years old. The serenity of life that I had known for almost three decades had erupted, and the images of flaming buildings and plummeting victims continued to haunt television screens. All anyone could talk about was “the terrorists.” We all grappled with the rollercoaster of emotions that are typical of mourning, but we had never known death like this before. There was no process to this grieving because emotions were as explosive as the attack itself. People were missing, phone lines were clogged, fears were ignited and morphing into hatred, and my job was to help this school of 700 students return to something that used to be called “normal.”
“We’re not really going to do anything to them,” one boy explained, as if this excused his words.
Their superiority now extended beyond those ‘others’ at the next lunch table. The ‘big boys’ on campus took a respite from ridiculing the freshmen and all bound together under the guise of patriotic duty to annihilate everyone from the Middle East. The same senior boys who had, during the first week of school, expected adulation and privilege because they were football players, were now raising flags on lawns and deciding which branch of the armed forces they might join. Everyone had gone crazy and desperately needed someone to blame, as if retribution would destroy this “other” and return life to what it was only days ago.
The chaos that erupted in the aftermath of 9/11 never settled; rather, my anxiety intensified. I refused to drive through the tunnel, a central artery of Boston’s infamous Big Dig. Driving over bridges, seeing ambulances, hearing sirens, even going out to bars unnerved me. Never had I been so conscious of my mortality. Yes, a fearful message had been delivered to our country and everyone lived on edge for several weeks. And something inside me had changed. While forging through my own unrest, I was also trying to console confused teenagers.
“Why would anyone want to kill us?” they’d ask.
“There is a lot that we still don’t understand,” I said.
“Are we going to go to war?”
These students were freshmen and sophomores in high school. They were 14 and 15 years old. While the question was more rhetorical, as in will our country go to war?, I could not help but look at them and see future soldiers or the image of caskets draped in American flags returning home for burial. It was eerie to look out into this classroom of 24 students and realize that a simple and unexpected act of terror could obliterate us all. Never before had that thought crossed my mind.
#
My apartment was 10 minutes away from Logan Airport, where one set of the terrorists had taken flight. As I drove home toward the city most nights, noting the lights that illuminated the skyline, I feared that the work of evil was not yet done. Every day that followed I grew more and more afraid that I too might be killed.
My Charlestown apartment was only five stops on the underground metro system from where some of my friends lived. On days when I had to ride the T, I tried to calm my nerves by holding my breath and counting for as long as possible. I preferred to drive my car everywhere. Circling Boston’s Back Bay for a half hour in search of a parking spot didn’t require a gas mask.
I couldn’t stop talking about the attack. I wanted to be surrounded by people at all times.
One night in early October, while I was on the phone with a friend who lived in California, I heard a series of pows exploding in the sky.
“What the hell was that?” I cried.
“What?”
“I think we’re being attacked,” I said.
“Hit the deck!” she said jokingly.
Being 3,000 miles away, it was easy to be light-hearted, but I felt alone. I was still suffering from the remnants of paranoia that lingered in the city. When driving through tunnels or over bridges, I gripped the wheel and prayed, perhaps to the spirit of humanity.
“You need to buy a gas mask,” a friend warned.
“Don’t get on the T,” a woman at work cautioned.
The aftermath of 9/11 was a publicly vulnerable time. The nation united in song and prayer. People searched for comfort and solace in the American flag, in the playing of “Proud to Be An American,” in each other, in their families. My impulse was to do the same. But even the world-changing crash of planes into the World Trade Centers was not enough to calm the battles in my family.
We were constantly at odds. We had been fighting for years. True, I could have called or visited my mom or my dad any day, but I couldn’t—or perhaps I wouldn’t—reach out to my siblings. The fissures had grown so wide that we didn’t bother to reach for each other. Not even in the aftermath of tragedy.