9-11 x10

What I did today. Governors Island was almost empty, as was all of the southern tip of Manhattan, which was sad to see on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (I guess the "credible but unspecific and unconfirmed threat" scared people off?)

Sad, yes, but I needed the space. It was amazing to be on Governors Island with stretches of lawn and the beautiful historic buildings and the salt of New York Harbor, with the breeze and the birds and my memories.

I had brought materials so that visitors could paint on the pennants, or write on a ribbon and tie it on. But there were no visitors. I think maybe The Twin Flowers were complete without the collaborators, we'll see what happens as they stand there for the final two weekends of Microtopia.

Only a few days before 9/11 my mother had an exploratory and was told "inoperable." She was still in the hospital here in NYC on 9/11 and for weeks afterward. Her cancer was what the world was about inside her hospital room (and at first I had to walk more than 3 miles there and 3 miles back because the buses were not running), and then, exiting the hospital and seeing all the flyers of missing loved ones ... and coming back downtown to breathe the smoke of burnt plastic and death ... there was such a disconnect and so much overlap all at once.

In the wake of 9/11 it was all about being strong for my girls. Except for the first minute of seeing both of those towers burning with my own eyes, while standing and sobbing alongside a group of bizarrely silent, zombie-like, random people who had gathered on the corner ... I never cried again. I made sure to use my reassuring voice. My Mom Will Keep You Safe voice.

I never did feel angry. I felt unable to process how human beings could act with such unfathomable hatred. I never lost my belief in people, but I could not put the pieces together, and to this day there is this gigantic double hole in the sky and I cannot find the pieces to complete the puzzle of my personal world.

This morning I opened my sewing machine, which had been my mother's sewing machine, to stitch a sleeve in each of the 16 pennants for The Twin Flowers. I could remember sitting at the same machine, my mother teaching me what her mother taught her, and her mother, backwards in time. I honor the mothers who did their best to keep each crop of children safe. I honor the lost souls. I honor the dead and those whose loved ones were ripped away from them so horribly.

The day that I can honor the souls of the haters, I will feel much better. For now they still don't fit.