six years ago i was in krasnodar, russia as a mormon missionary. i still had jet-lag. my understanding of the slick southern russian accent was pathetic. i was a walking jumble of embarrassment, confusion, inability, and exhaustion.
on the afternoon of september 11th, we, my fellow missionary companion and i, climbed eleven flights of stairs to visit a young boy and his mother.
we knocked. they answered. we went inside. we took off our shoes. our shoes were muddy. the mother kept waving her handkerchief. she was crying. she was saying something i didn’t understand. she pulled both of us into the back room. the tv was on. i sat on a stool. i watched airplanes. the airplanes were flying into buildings. i thought it was a movie. (we weren’t supposed to watch movies.) i was uncomfortable. i wanted to leave. i whispered to my companion, “what is going on?” she stared at me. “it’s the news.” “the news?” “that’s new york.” she pointed at the screen. the news. planes were flying into buildings in new york. i couldn’t understand it. everyone else in the room was pacing. the mother nearly hysterical. i sat on the stool. i didn’t know what anyone was saying.
when we got back outside, later, i heard someone running through the streets and screaming, “war, war, war.” i could smell grapes ripening and fermenting in the sun.
that’s all i knew for a week or more. we weren’t allowed to read the news. but it didn’t matter. the news was outside my vocabulary. i didn’t know the word for terrorist in russian. i still don’t.
i’m not sure i can describe how frightening it was to be so far from home. after the attack, me and my companion used to sit on the edges of our beds in the dark and talk about what we would do if we could never get back to america: which of the other missionaries we might marry–whether we would have a family or just sit and wait, palms open, for the world to end.
i’m not sure how the world has changed. i keep living. i keep finding delight in my son and my books and my husband’s smile and my boxes of impatiens on the porch. but at the back of mind, there’s always that little itchy fear that my future won’t be the same as my parents. that i will send henry to school, watch his backpack bob into elementary school, and never know if he will come home.
so what do we do in a world like this? horde water and canned tuna? keep our children in the basements? avoid airports, major cities, travel, and envelopes?
i’m not saying i have an answer. but looking back at 2001, i wonder if i had it right. we were scared, true, but every morning we pulled on our boots and took to the streets and the trams looking for people who needed us. i didn’t put buildings back together or resurrect lives, but i did have a hand in a few well-placed sausages and loaves of bread. i did what i could in my little sphere. i think that’s all life ever asks of us: that we reach with our own two hands.
what’s your answer?
I was in the Washington, D.C. area on September 11, 2001. The air had an eerie feeling. Normally planes were constantly flying over our house on their path to the Dulles airport. That day everything was completely silent. Except of course for the fighter jets that would fly over our house just above the trees as they circled the capital city. I’m not sure if their appearance caused more comfort or fear. Six days later I walked onto a plane and flew from the nation’s capital to Utah where I would enter the missionary training center. People asked me, “how can you get on a plane so soon?” I would just smile and say that I was probably taking the safest flight I had ever taken in my life. I developed a different fear in those weeks. I wasn’t very worried about myself; I was going to stay in the U.S. for my missionary service and I would probably be safer than if I was home. But that was what fed into my fear–my home was a major target. Would it still be there when I got back? Would my family still be there for me to come home to? Or would they fall victims to some future threat? The only thing I could do was serve those I had committed to serve and pray that God would in turn protect my family. So yes Jessie, I think you are right. Serving in my own little sphere is how I made it through that time as well.
I remember that day so vividly. I walked out my humanities class in the JKHB, and turned the stairs to go downstairs. A friend caught me by the arm, she could probably tell by my calm expression that I didn’t know. I didn’t believe it, I heard everyone talking about it, but didn’t believe it. That night I was stunned, numb, just sitting on the edge of my bed. That was the first, and only time I wrote tyson twice in one week on his mission. I could hear my roommates talking about wanting to go shopping for clothes the next day, i thought they were joking.
no joke, their world hadn’t been changed. mine has, and yet it’s so easy to forget. it was sad to walk outside last week, and no one seemed to be caring that it had been 6 years, and everyone had forgot.
you’re right jess, my own two hands is about all i have to give right now.