When fog lifts ...

Today, September 11, brings many memories from the past to the present. Folks whose birthday or anniversary is today, and how that now feels weird. The place where I was sitting at the precise moment someone rushed in the room and said, "They flew an airplane into the building ...!" though I was hundreds of miles away from New York City or Washington, DC. A building burning. Another plane. Two buildings burning. The Pentagon. Massive collapse. Dust. Worrying suddenly about my loved ones in a way which seemed so raw and new and not normal. Anger. UA 93 crashed with all dead in Somerset County, PA. Images of Americans, and others, falling and jumping from upper floors of the World Trade Center buildings to avoid burning to death. Imagining, yet turning away from, that terrible final decision they had to make - then live and die with. Fear. A weight on my soul pressing down on my sense of reality. The feeling of something was gone, forever. The feeling of something new was here, forever.

Another memory also comes to me. Several years before terrorists killed so many of our fellow Americans, and others, with such great efficiency in September of 2001, my wife was with me for a somewhat routine business trip into New York City. As a surprise special outing, I arranged dinner at Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower, One World Trade, for the two of us. My purpose was to share with her the magnificent nighttime view of New York City from that unique perspective - more than a hundred floors above the streets. All of my planning worked as designed including arranging our table to be directly along the glass facing northeast into the heart of the city. When we arrived at our table, we were completely fogged in. Not just a little bit. It was like the glass was painted white. There was nothing we could do about it. Nothing. So, we had dinner. There was not even a hint of light from outside. We talked. We even laughed at ourselves a little bit ... at how even the best arranged plans when we think we have everything well in hand ... are never fully in our control. Never. We aren't fancy people, but we took our time. We had coffee after dinner. We had dessert. We had a wonderful time. We knew we were not going to get to see the city lights and the fog was not going to lift. We agreed we would just come back some other time and try again. Little did we know.

Then it happened. Just a twinkle of light there. A hint of glow there. A hazy dot of red moving over there. Two lights close together out there. Almost like a dawn glow from down below. The room went quiet. Then, in a matter of seconds the fog was gone. It was if the whole city had been switched on in a blink of an eye. We pointed. We marveled. We stared. We talked about how we were glad we waited. I think we ordered more coffee and another dessert. We stayed at our table for a long time. We marveled some more.

This was before smartphones with cameras, so the only recorded image of this dazzling experience is the one my wife and I share in our memories.

Anytime I see images of the twin towers, or the airplane attack, or the ground zero memorials, or the wreckage, or the brave persons who rushed toward the disasters to give aid and to serve others, or the people falling into the last few desperate seconds of their interrupted earthly lives, or any other remembrance of September 11, 2001, I return to the moment when that fog lifted for us on that night. I'm emotionally, intellectually, profoundly, and humbly struck at how truly wonderful those fog-lifting moments were and how horrible the evil-death-moments would be just a few years later.

As time goes by, it seems that my own fog is perhaps lifting, much more slowly and not in the blink of an eye as on that night decades ago. I see dots and glows and movement and patterns. Those gentle indicators give rise to an anticipation inside that keeps me looking and hoping.

I marvel at this journey we call life ....