Good Intentions

But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, "This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions." And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

--Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

I am exactly one week late in blogging about September 11 and what it means to me. I had every intention of weighing in on the subject last Tuesday--but I didn't. The day passed me by and then several were gone with it and, to be honest, I barely felt their passage. Life has a way of interupting all my best intentions.

Six years ago this week, I was in the midst of preparing to fly across the Atlantic. I cried at the airport and even at twenty, I clung to my mother. Know that I love you, I begged her. She didn't make me get on the plane. In fact, in the wake of September 11, it would have been easy to get a refund on my ticket and some of the girls that I went to school with did just that. They cashed in their junior year abroad for a chance to mourn and process at home. I will never know what it was like to live in America in the days that followed that first September 11.

I spent that autumn in England.

I was afraid to get on the plane--and so was everyone else. (It was the most polite flight I have ever been on. ) But I was more afraid to stay behind. I thought that it might hurt my academic career to show up at college three weeks late. And I was sure that someone would know the truth--that I was absolutely frightened for my life in that first few weeks abroad. But the thing is that I was always frightened, even before the events of September 11.

Leaving home--what is more frightening than this?

On the morning that I arrived in London, I had three cups of coffee and accidentally brushed my teeth with Benadryl cream.

And then I met my husband. He was standing in the doorway of the hall's communal kitchen. He wore a yellow skirt and had a commanding presence when he demanded, "Where have you been?"

Now he claims that he was asking out of concern, that he and other British students had been warned to be considerate of their American counterparts in this difficult time. I like to think that the rest of that question was...all my life.

Yes, indeed, where have you been all my life?

On that first September 11, I knew as I watched the replay of events at Ground Zero that this would be a defining time for my generation and I imagined telling my children that I would never forget where I was that day. (...in a bed and breakfast in Denton, Texas suffering from serious food poisoning while on a short break with my mom...)

I did not know that in the weeks that followed I would meet my husband. I did not know that only a year later (to this day), he would write a letter that professed his love and changed our lives. I did not know that four years after that we would be married--and facing a mandatory seperation because of our different nationalities. I did not know that on September 11, 2007, my husband would finally be welcomed into my country as a permanent resident. A temporary permanent resident--actually.

I did not know that our lives would be constantly touched by the red tape and suspicion that has marked my country's response to the attack.

I did not know that we would live through other crises that struck closer. (A bus blew up outside the school I had previously attended in July 2005; my inlaws were on the last plane leaving Heathrow for the US on the day that several planes were grounded there because of a thwarted terrorist attack--they were on their way to our wedding.) I did not know that we would make a life together, one that seems inextricably linked with the way the world is today.

We are a family with ties around the globe. We live in a small world and we live in a world that seems more frustrating and more scary than it used to be. This is what I will remember and what I intend to tell my children, my children whose world I can yet hardly imagine:

In the midst of one of the most fearful times of my life, I found just that. I found life.

In the years since, my naivete has been reduced to rubble. The ivory tower of first love is gone. I met my husband six years ago this week and in that time I have known the best and worst of him and of myself because that is what life is like and life always prevails.

There are so many things I did not know six years ago as I cried on my mother's shoulder. I thought that I was leaving home--maybe forever. How could I have known that I hadn't even found it yet?