11.05.08
The Rising
I have a memory of being about nine or ten, sitting in the kitchen of the old house and curling my feet towards the heat register as my mom talked about how she would never forget the moment she heard that JFK had been assassinated, how the nuns and her classmates had simply gotten down on their knees to pray because no one knew what else to do. She told me how everyone in her generation had their own memory of the JFK assassination, that some moments were like that—something that no one can forget where they were, what they were wearing, what they were doing in the seconds before history unfolded right before them.
I was in the emergency room of the Leduc hospital the first time war was declared on Iraq. I had a violent ear infection that had come on suddenly and was laying across the bucket chairs, trying to ignore the way the room spun when I opened my eyes. The news blared somberly from a television mounted on the wall and a heavy, disbelieving silence clung to the room.
I was in the living room of the house I shared with my college roommates, three of us crowded onto the futon, breathlessly watching the dead heat in the Oui/Non vote, a single bead of sweat making its way down my arm when the results were finally announced.
I was early for work, planning to get caught up on a project, and surprised the only other person in the office. He was watching a news feed on his computer and he turned around to me, stricken, wide-eyed, and said, simply, “Holy fuck.” Over his shoulder the second tower crumpled into a dark heap of ashes while a reporter shrieked “Oh my God! Oh my God!” over and over. I felt the air punch out of the room, the world draining out from under my feet.
I was at home, sitting next to Kieran, his hand on my back, when a black man was elected president of the United States, when the entire nation burst into life again, when Jesse Jackson’s tear stained face flashed up on the screen and the enormity of the moment rose up out of the cheering crowd.