But today, more importantly, is the third anniversary of the day that changed our lives. Virtually everything we do today is affected by the events of 9/11. It takes longer to get on a plane now. There are fewer public trash cans. We are more suspicious of strange packages and different people. And it is sad...
Anyway, there is little I can add to the conversation. Almost everything worth saying has already been said by better people than me. So allow me to play a re-run. Below is a slightly editted version of an entry from last year...
Remembering
T |
hree years ago on this day, many people died at the hands of a group of desperate people--people who shared similar traits to the suicide kamikaze of WWII. I don't mean to "revise" the image of kamikaze as a group of people desperately battling the cultural encroachment by and hegemony of the West; nor do I intend to equate the attacks of kamikaze pilots on military targets with terrorists on non-military ones. But I do believe that desperate people resort to extreme measures to accomplish their goals. It is frightening and more than a little sad...
On a lighter note on this solemn day, I would like to tell you that there seems to be an affinity between disasters and me sitting on the can. As I mentioned earlier this week (last year), I was sitting down, doing my business when the '89 SF earthquake hit, and fearing my body would be discovered under undignified circumstances. Well, two years ago on 9/11, I was again reading the newspaper in my favorite place when Musubi-chan pounded on the door to hand me the telephone receiver--damn, these cordless phones! It was my sister and she was screaming at me.
"Oh my God. It's horrible!"
"Huh? Calm down, what's up?" I said, half jokingly.
"Haven't you heard? You're ALWAYS on the toilet. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center."
I was frozen in horror because my sister worked right across the street from the WTC. But I immediately calmed down as I remembered that she just happend to be in LA taking care of our ill mother.
"God, Onigiriman." (No, she doesn't really call me this.) "There was a crash at the Pentagon, too. Didn't you hear? Isn't your school near the Pentagon? Do you LIVE in the bathroom?!?"
"..........."
I don't mean to make light of today's significance. But this is pretty much how it unfolded for me that day. It is now a standing joke in our house that I spend far too much time in my special room, and whenever I'm there, there's always the possibility of a disaster. M yaps about my time there, and my sister always tells me she's glad we have extra bathrooms. Whenever they start talking like this, I grab the most recent issue of SI or Newsweek and head to the... uh, you-know-where.
I have always been aware of my looks. In my early years, I was often told that I was cute and adorable by the adults around me--my students may stop laughing now... In first grade, I remember once being chased by the girls. Of course, they were probably just trying to beat me up. However, in my formative years--oh, I guess from 4th to 9th grade--I had developed a complex. After a few well-timed comments by some of the "cool" kids in class, I was forever exiled into the dreaded margins of society, the one reserved for dorks. After being told how poorly I played basketball--Man, you suck. Why do you have to be on our team.--or how ugly I dressed, I was absolutely convinced that I was one of the dorkiest kids ever born. 
My sister laughs, of course. Not because she thinks that it's wierd, for as much as I miss my mother, she misses her more. But she laughs because she would remind me of how often I had forgotten to send mom something, or even call her on her birthday. As a son, I pretty much sucked. This more or less exposes how much of a spoiled kid I was in many ways. These thoughts remind me of another sad expression: 孝行をしたい時分に親はなし、さればとて石に布団も着せられず (When one wants to be filial, the parents are gone. And of course, one cannot cover the grave stone with a blanket). This suggests that trying to keep your parent warm by covering her grave with a blanket is not an expression of filial piety, that it is too late to show your love with such a meaningless action.
I didn't give much thought to her words back then, but it lingers in my consciousness, dogging me almost daily. As for the movie "Tokyo Story", I can no longer watch it, as it is the last movie I ever saw together with my mother... 
