A Clear Blue Day, Then Shades of Gray
We were driving to a doctor's appointment in Virginia on a day that was so beautiful. We commented about the lack of a single cloud in the sky, just beautiful blue with sparkling sunshine. We agreed that this kind of splendid day was a gift to enjoy and savour. We were listening to a book-on-tape, all was right with the world. It was noon as I pulled the car into the doctor's parking lot. My husband stayed in the car to listen to NPR.
The minute I entered the doctor's office, I felt a tenseness in the atmosphere. Staff and patients looked worried and grim. How could this be on such a beautiful day? Then, in bits and pieces, I began to learn about the horror that was occurring. I began to feel an urgent need to get back to the car, to listen to the radio with Ted and try to understand how this could have happened in the United States. It could happen in other countries, but certainly not in ours.
When I got back into the car, Ted began relating what he had heard. Then we continued to listen together as we started back to our home in West Virginia. The sun was still shining, the sky was still cloudlessly blue, so why was this happening? Things like this don't happen on beautiful days. Numbness, disbelief, trying to grasp the enormity of what we were hearing. We pushed buttons, jumping from one station to another.
Finally we were back home in our West Virginia mountains. The birds were still singing and the flowers were still blooming. We sat on our porch and talked about what had happened. We speculated about how this heinous crime had been carried out so successfully. Where was our national security and why hadn't someone discovered what was afoot? What good would a missle defense system do in cases like this?
We finally turned the television on and then the white hot anger set in. Dear God ... this can't be happening. Why, why, why? All those innocent people, all the shattered families clinging to faint hope, haunted faces pleading for information about their loved ones ...
Friends called and we found ourselves reassuring each other, grieving together, and asking the same questions everyone else was asking ... how, why, who? We all agreed that the problems we thought we had were suddenly put into the proper perspective... what problems?
Now it's the day after ... another beautiful, cloudless one, but we see only shades of gray. In time pain will be blunted, monuments will be erected, pieces of lives will be picked up again, the country will return to the business at hand, new procedures and safeguards will be implemented, but will we ever be quite as carefree and innocent again?
Last updated: 09/14/01