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Today I turn 40. Ordinarily, I think this milestone birthday would have consisted of take-out Chinese, construction-paper cards and Botox jokes. We're a busy family with three young children, tee-ball practice, and bills to pay.
But since September 11, turning 40 is more significant because, as I scan the list of victims identified in the newspaper, it's hard to find people who were older than I am today. Chris would be 35 now. He wasn't my real cousin but our dads are best friends and his parents have always been "Aunt" and "Uncle" so he was my "cousin." Because we grew up together and rarely saw each other as adults, I think of Christopher as a perpetual four-year-old boy to my eight- or nine-year-old self. Our dads were pals since childhood, and Chris and his folks spent a lot of nights with us at my parents' weekend place on the North Shore of Long Island. He was the only little boy my sister and I knew intimately by virtue of being under the same roof. We were definitely a girly household and this young Hot Wheels connoisseur with big brown eyes was a fascinating departure from everyday routine. Christopher was coddled by his mom, adored by his dad. His mom used to lie with him at night until he fell asleep in our unfamiliar house. If he called out after bedtime, my mother, who doted on this son she never had, would sneak him jelly sandwiches in bed to make the strange surroundings seem more friendly and fun. I've often referred back to those days as I raise my own young sons, aged five and two. I see that little boys can be afraid of swimming in the bay and watching movies with tarantulas in them. A boy may have a special blanket he loves. Chris had "cozy." My sons have "blankie" and "gunk-gunk." A boy might have an adversarial relationship with the family cat and still love that pet. Then a boy can grow up to be a handsome, successful businessman who gets invited to management breakfasts at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. When I saw her last summer, Christopher's mom offered me his business card and said, "Call Chris, he'd love to hear from you." As I stashed the card in my bag, I remember thinking, "Oh yeah, he'd love to hear from his old, married pseudo-cousin in Westchester." I figured he was busy being a cute single guy in New York, in the prime of his life. But when I heard the news that there'd been a cell phone call and then nothing, I reacted as a mother. I sat on my five-year-old's bed as he slept and I cried and cried. At the memorial service for Steven, who married my sister's childhood classmate and worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, a lot of the girls from high school showed up. As we gathered in the church hall afterwards, Sarah, the class clown from 20 years ago, went outside for a smoke. She suddenly appeared in a picture window with her face against the glass. She blew with her lips on the window so that her cheeks puffed out and the smoke from her cigarette slowly billowed out of her mouth. We had to stifle a laugh because it was silly and gross and a sign that nothing had changed since high school. Except that one of us was a widow with two small children to raise on her own. When I visited Ground Zero in October, I gasped and thought, Chris is in there. Lisa's husband, the two young dads from our church. It was so paralyzing, I forgot to say a prayer. Of course, this sense of loss has occurred in previous generations. The young have perished in cruel numbers in the pursuit of noble causes. But we were still children during Vietnam. We came of age in peace, somehow thinking war was a thing of the past. We grew up slowly because there was no need to rush. By September 12, we'd grown up overnight and we continue to travel down that sober and adult road. Girls like Sarah will still be able to make us crack up when we get together, only I guess we're not girls anymore. This is 40. Comforting widows and orphans, mourning eligible bachelors. And putting away childish things. — Susan Konig, a journalist, has just written a book, Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (And Other Lies I Tell My Children). |
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30, the traditional Memorial Day before everyone got a Monday off. And
today, the victims of September 11 will be remembered at Ground Zero as
the recovery effort officially ends.
