I had just arrived home late after a working dinner with clients when my cell phone rang and a dear friend of mine in Osaka told me to turn on CNN. I told him I needed call him back but he was insistent, almost angry with me, and he said in rough Japanese “look, just do it dumbass!” which shocked me into silence. I turned on the TV to see the first tower smoking on a brilliant clear New York morning.

My family and I watched in horror as 2 minutes later the 2nd plane smashed into Tower 2. My older son, 9 at the time, saw me cry for the first time in his life. My wife took our 3-year old son into the other room and rocked him to sleep, and the older boy finally asked me in a breaking voice “Is this the end of the world?” and began to cry himself. Dinner, baths, homework, dishes…brushing teeth…all daily routine was forgotten.

I told him “no son, not the end, but our world has just changed forever”.

“Why are you afraid? You’re crying…” he asked, tearing up more.

I immediately gained composure, and my resolve became clear.

“Yes son, I am afraid a little, and I should be. This is an act of war.”

I found my voice and continued, my fists clenching and un-clenching.

“But more than fear, I am angry, and these tears are tears of rage because I can’t do anything to stop this from happening right now. But I swear to you I will protect you and your mother and brother and we will be ok.”

I tried in vain to get through to the US on the phone for the next hour, and my son wandered in to sleep next to his mother and brother in our bed. We all slept (what sleep we could get) in one bed that night…and for several more.

The phone lines from Japan were not working to anywhere in the USA until about three hours later when I got through to my brother in Poughkeepsie, then my mother in Oregon. Things were still not clear about who was responsible or whether the US was expecting more attacks. The Japanese government was also on high alert, and my the president of the Japanese company I worked for called to express sympathy and tell me he understood if I didn’t go to work in the morning.

I called my father, who was living in Mexico, something I never would do on a normal day. My father and I did not get along well, but we had at least been on speaking terms since I’d gotten married and he’d made the effort to come to visit us in Tokyo after the wedding. It was the first time since I was a small child that I felt comforted to hear his voice. He told me later that it was the first time in his life he ever felt comforted by mine.

I went in to work the next morning anyway to the most surreal office experience of my life even more surreal than my first day on the job as the only full time foreign staffer in a mid-sized consulting firm near the heart of Tokyo. People I thought I knew well avoided conversation, some even avoided looking at me. People I had never spoken to before came up and offered their nervous condolences.

The company president spent half a day to come all the way from Yokohama to talk to me and tell me that he would give me his “support if I needed any special time to myself” which I assured him I did not. He then urged me to cancel a business trip I had planned the next week to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. I refused to cancel.

The people of Malaysia, mostly Muslims, treated me extremely well on that trip. For unknown reasons, my client in Indonesia canceled our meetings, but the people in Thailand and Singapore were also very very kind. On my return from the business trip I attended a weekly management meeting and discussed my trip and the need to continue as I would have before 9/11.

Life went on. I refused to let fear win. For my sons. For my wife. For my self. For my friends in the office.

But as you all know, things changed after that day, even for me living in Tokyo. People’s responses to me on first meeting were different, measured, cautious. With each news cycle, the Bushies were making it clear that this was to become the excuse for a crusade. Sure I wanted a response. I wanted Bin Laden’s frigging head. But not this. Not the paranoia and the lies. Not the theopolitical prosyletization. Not the racism and the cowardice of the attack on Iraq. Certainly not the curtailment of civil liberties for American citizens. And certainly not the misguided hatred of Americans for other Americans.

Thus far the terrorists have won and Bush/Cheney were their weapon of choice. Sarah Palin and the remaining WingNuts are what remains of their arsenal. The terrorists have co-opted that hatred they incited and scorched so deeply into our collective hearts with the jet fuel of 9/11and made sure that we Americans have channeled the HATE inward in a special political and theological mixture of national self-loathing that has the potential to turn we Americans to violence upon one another, American upon American.

Put the HATE where it belongs. Hate that genocidal maniac Bin Laden and his murderous band of terrorists, but wake up and for the grace and good of the United States of America, LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!!!!

Somehow, I always felt that when the geese flew off a few days later, that they carried our grief for the spirits of the lost directly to them through that blue sky, that somehow they were able to reach them directly, and comfort the rest of the nation as they traveled their flyways during that awful time. It is hard to explain why the geese felt like messengers, winging across the continent to whatever places they leave us for, but I believe they carried some comfort to someone, somewhere.

IsyFleur: You’re an inspiration. I have other reasons for anger and fear but will
endeavor to choose hope and trust, as you have. Thank you, and I will hope and trust for you, also. Blessings.