SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
THE NUCLEAR AGE (OR, THE END OF THE SUMMER)

Let me state for the record that I live nowhere near New York City. I live three thousand miles away, in fact, on the opposite coast of the United States. A calmer way of life, a more laid-back setting. But today that calm, and the silent laid-back quality to life was shattered. I awoke at seven-thirty am, my usual rising time for work, to a woman's voice stating matter-of-factly over the radio that the FAA (which, as I knew, stood for the Federal Aviation Administration) had grounded all flights going in and out of America, as well as domestic flights. In other words, air travel was effectively crippled. Not particularly listening to the story, as my goal was to turn off the alarm and go take my morning shower, I turned off the radio and laid back down. A split second later, Jonathan sat up.

"Wait, turn that back on -- what did they just say?" I shrugged, still apathetic and groggy from four hours of fitful sleep the night before. "Amber, did they just say that they grounded all air traffic in this country?" I shrugged again, wondering if that was why the news anchor had sounded so grim.

The next few moments went rather quickly. The shuffling of places on the bed, the unlocking of computers, the realization that our nation security had been torn to shreds: my fingers turned to ice, hot tears threatened my cheeks, and quivers ran up and down my spine. I crawled back into bed as Jonathan spoke to his mother over AIM, and she briefed the two of us over what had happened so far. I withdrew further and further into my hole. I woke as the towers were falling; I woke as thousands of people lost their lives. I called my father, reading the time to be seven forty-five am. I knew he would be awake. And I knew he would be watching.

"Can you believe this?" I stammered into the telephone, without even saying hello. He would know who it was. Only his frantic psuedo journalist-historian daughter would call him at seven forty-five on a Tuesday morning, knowing he was awake and watching CNN, to talk about a national disaster.

"No, I can't," he replied, with fear in his voice. I took a moment to think about all that my father has seen in his lifetime: the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK (he remembers JFK so clearly that you would think it happened yesterday); the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Challenger, Lockerbie, TWA, the first WTC bombing, Oklahoma City. He has lived through all of these, and seen the horror of them all; and yet, when I talked to him on the phone this morning, I knew that he had never seen anything this bad in all of his forty-nine years. I cried a little on the phone. He told me that my grandparents were in Connecticut, but were fine; I assured him that I had talked to my friends in NYC on the telephone and that they were fine as well. And I was relieved to get off of the phone with him; but still worried, worried that something would happen in Los Angeles as well.

And before I knew it, a state of emergency was being declared in the large port-oriented metropolitan area in which I live; and San Francisco International Airport was being evacuated, and people were being told not to enter San Francisco, and direct BART service to SF was canceled. Schools were closed, people went into mourning. Friends left work, friends were glued to the televison, friends came online to hold each others hands. And a million things were going through my head. The headlines continue to pour in, each one more wrenching than the next. This hour's: "New York City reports at least 78 police officers missing, 200 firefighters presumed dead." The fact is that I do not feel safe in my own nation. A nation that, until now, has managed to remain the safest in the world. I will find it extremely difficult to fly anywhere for the near future. Waiting for another shoe to drop will become a pastime. Remembering the photos, the voices, and the reality that friends of friends had their parents killed today will remain in my head forever. It isn't often that the scape of the United States is irrevocably changed.

Rumours are flying. We're at war, say some. But we're not; but we could be. How real, really, would war be? Would it seem like a life-size game of Risk just as it did when I was younger and we broke the backs of the Iraquis in three days? The two generations who are just now entering the Real World are getting quite the culture shock. Those who were not alive for World War Two and were either not alive or too young to remember Vietnam only have the Gulf War to gague their war experiences by. I think it's safe to say a few things as evening falls on both New York and San Francisco: first, we have reached Tim O'Brien's Nuclear Age. No matter how much we would like to deny it, there is a threat of unknown proportions on or horizon. Secondly, we may have reached the proverbial 'boiling point' that Daniel Quinn so well verbalized in The Story of B (though, as seen on his website, Quinn mentions that "It's just Takers killing Takers--political murder of the ordinary kind--nothing new and certainly nothing to rejoice over").

Third, we have reached the end of the summer. While temperatures may still burn our skin well into the afternoon hours, I'm nearly positive that winter began at nearly six am this morning.