September 11, 2009
Eight years ago on this date, my heart was broken. Yet I also realized how important the family bond was, as e-mails flew back and forth with assurances from various family members that, yes, we were safe. Many had no such assurance, and for them the heartbreak has not ceased. But even though my family was safe, the sadness of hearing about those final, desperate cell phone calls or even about the determined ones from Flight 93, punctured everyone’s sense of safety.So it seems odd on this day to think about comfort—so many had that comfort ripped away from them.
And comfort, a kind of wealth in itself, sometimes gets a bad name. It’s unevenly distributed. A surgeon bursts out of the OR and the family knows the worst from looking at his face. A phone call in the middle of the night rouses parents or spouses or children from their place of comfort. Someone roots through trash cans, not having known anything like comfort for perhaps years.
Further, “comfort” suggests ease, relaxation, needs being met so smoothly and seamlessly that they are barely perceived. It is envied by those who don’t have it and yet also derided as a state of stagnation by preachers and self-improvement gurus.
It is subject to challenge. Everyone urges us out of our “comfort zone.”
And while I recognize that personal growth often requires risking what’s comfortable or safe, it might be time to look at what exactly “comfort” means and why we sometimes need it as much as we need to risk it.
The word comes from the Latin “fortis” or “strong,” and “confortāre to strengthen” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comfort). But the “giving strength” aspect of the word has faded and become obsolete, replaced by the more current understanding of the word as enjoying ease.
The old sense of “comfort” has more to do with “fortification,” shoring up, strengthening. It is more double-edged. Fortifying can involve shoring up but also involves testing, ensuring that a structure can withstand destructive forces.
In this sense, it can call for a step into the unknown, a step away from the tv or away from “comfort foods,” trading the romance novel for Romeo and Juliet.
My students, while discussing what they liked and didn’t like about reading outlined both senses of the word “comfort.” One student said that while he enjoyed “leisure reading,” he didn’t so much like the kind that required a lot of note taking, figuring out what the author meant. Another student said that she enjoyed reading because it took her places she couldn’t otherwise go. And it seems to me that definition of reading bridges the gap between reading for entertainment and reading for study—as well as comfort in the sense of ease and relaxation versus comfort as strengthening, which would seem to me to both serve the same purpose: helping one negotiate life.
The comfort of a favorite novel or section of the newspaper allows the brain to take needed rest and so recharge. A familiar dish can connect a person with some happy time in her life and so evoke that happiness and security. While traveling, people often seek out foods from home. Shakespeare’s book store in Paris was, I admit, was one of my favorite haunts while visiting there because of its wide selection of English-language books.
Yet at the same time, if we don’t seek out places that test or challenge us, we can find our strength diminishing, just as an athlete who doesn’t stretch her limits as well as rest can find herself not performing as well in her sport.
But what does this have to do with eight years ago?
I tried to imagine and found it too painful what it would be like to board a plane thinking it would be a normal flight, the problems nothing more than a bit of turbulence or a crying child in the next seat. And I thought of the fear and shock of seeing strangers with murderous intentions taking over the plane, knowing bit by bit that my life was about to end violently and painfully and that there was nothing I could do about this fact. What would I remember? What would I want loved ones to remember? What control would I have over those last moments alive? I don’t know.
I remember once upon hearing that there was an Amtrak collision in Chicago that I went through a heightened state of fear and anxiety because my sister was planning a business trip via Amtrak to Chicago. I remember my relief when I learned she was not on that train. And my response when I learned that was to e-mail her and tell her I loved her since many would not have that chance and wish they had.
I wonder if, on that plane or in the World Trade Center, or in the Pentagon, I’d be thinking of risks I wish I’d taken, times I wish I’d ventured out, tried something new, found strength not just in the familiar but in breaking away from the familiar, stretching my understanding of “comfort.”
What would I long for? My thought on September 11, 2009, was to take the simple step that a busy day allowed—nothing huge or dramatic, certainly nothing heroic on the scale of what people did that day—but, at the very least, something that affirmed life and being alive.
I took a walk/run in the rain—in pouring rain—through my neighborhood park. My knee had been hurting the day before, adding to the longstanding but slowly healing foot injury, and I had given in to discouragement, given into the rain, wanted to stay indoors. But it seemed an admission of defeat to do this.
I wanted to give those who died an act of healing and hope, however private. I would, of course, have to listen to my body—the knee felt better but I had to take it slowly. Yet taking it slowly might have its own benefits. In training for races, I obsess with times, with distance, with achievement. On this trip, which was more tour than training, I would take the time to notice whatever caught my attention—such as the tennis courts, turf glazed and leaf covered, a floral mosaic.
Stopping to look, I realized I didn’t have my watch. Just as well. This was an invitation to set time aside, live in the space around me instead.
I wanted this to be the run and walk that I would remember in my last moments, wherever I was. I wanted to remember splashing through puddles like a kid, getting wet fearlessly. Eventually, I untied the jacket hood, drawn tight around my head, observed no clock but ran or walked whenever I chose.
Wandered down to take a look at the now swollen stream ford where the high school runners crossed on a brighter, warmer day.
A succession of asphalt, dirt, grass, and cedar shavings led me to the edge of the park. The voices of the landscape urged me to speed up, to run, to run up the hill leading to State Road, and so I did, crossing when I arrived to take cash from the ATM at the Wawa, where there’s no charge—an unplanned stop, a gift—and then back downhill, through the park again—across the grass, where I looked up and let the raindrops tickle my face. Took a detour to follow (loosely) the western side of the Upper Darby High School cross-country course.
Unlike the runners, however, I chose the footbridge instead of the ford to return to the road—just to stand in the middle and watch the water tumble over the rocks below me. And listen to its roar, drowning out, for the moment, the roar of traffic, the clatter of trolleys. And to the muted yet distinct patter of raindrops. The Nature Company sells sticks that when shaken sound like those raindrops—people buy tapes of that sound. Yet I was hearing the real thing.
And the abundance of water, the rain, the stream, the puddles—maybe one day they would soothe and quench the fires of loss, of pain, heal and cleanse. But it will take time and many walks in the rain.
I was in New York recently, within a block of what is now called “Ground Zero.” But a powerful sense that I was trespassing held me back from proceeding further. This was a gravesite. So much agony for so many. To walk on it, to gape at it, even for the purpose of paying respects felt somehow invasive. The voices of the victims ask of us to live, to comfort, to grow, to remember forward. And walk in the rain sometimes.
posted by DPMcManus @ 12:14 PM
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