Driving Whilst The World Changed
Remember when airports were fun? When travel by airline was a delight? No restrictions on water or shoes? When the longest line was for the duty free, and you didn’t spend hours agonizing over little bottles of conditioner? I do. I remember. Claire had arrived that morning. Into my newly familiar world came an old friend. In my exuberance to make her feel part; I was there at the airport. Closer, I was in the departures lounge. Closer. I was at the gate at 6:18 central standard time. I was there with coffee and a croissant. It was a Tuesday, and work beckoned. An assembly to greet the new students, at our new school. But first Claire.
Arriving to study, arriving to be my friend,to be a familiar in this new world. She came down the gangplank exhausted but excited. We hugged. We walked through the airport catching up on gossip from home. Sophie had started university, Chris and Fi were planning their wedding. Claire and I were starting new adventures. We waited for the bags, three of them. We left the airport, unhindered.
We piled everything into the car and drove,with the top down in a borrowed BMW, into the early September sun. It could have been the start of a movie.It was 6:46 central.I noticed the palindrome,as we drove into the sunlight and reached for sunglasses simultaneously. Green Day was blaring, I hope you have the time of your life. It was a 10-mile trip while the world changed and stayed the same all at once.
The perfection of that trip would have been lost had I known how to change the CD to the radio.
Claire’s host family for this adventure were bleary eyed, pre coffee watching the news, greeting an unknown guest. They drew us into the lounge around the various news reports. We paused together and watched the world change. I touched her hand and that moment communicated all the ‘could have beens.' We drove as the world changed.
The image in my head is my dial up internet clicking agonizingly slowly. CNN’s new website, frozen with a picture of plane two approaching tower two.No students had mobile phones; parents started calling. Do you have a terror attack strategy? Our school had been open six days, we barely knew where the bathrooms were located.
In the assembly that day we talked about new safety procedures before the students had opportunity to understand the old safety procedures. We called parents to comfort, and in a mess of unknown panic, parents cancelled classes. It was Sarah’s birthday; I brought her a Snickers and a Doctor Pepper. The ordinary things in the heart of an extraordinary tragedy. I’ve never greeted a friend at the gate again.
