Colorado to Montana – “The Twin Towers” – Going on the Road with My Ol’ Man – September 18, 2001
I’m traveling West to meet up with my pop for a week of shows. Our reunion couldn’t come at a better time. I need family connection right now.
DIA is empty and what else can be expected? The Twin Towers in New York have crumbled to the ground and nothing will ever be the same—especially travel by air. The way my fellow travelers hold their breath makes the bleak day outside seem unbearable, impenetrable, steely, and cruel. Everyone looks scared to fly. You can see tragedy etched into all of our expressions—the echo of towers on fire and falling, the asbestos-filled plumes of smoke, the screams of New Yorkers searching hospitals and armories for their loved ones—gone. These scenes and others are sashed in the storage lockers of our our eyes.
As I wait my turn to go through a metal detector, I recall when I first heard the news a week ago today. I’d been Rain-X-ing my car on September 11th—cursing myself for not following the directions on the bottle. There was a permanent fog on my windshield that no amount of elbow grease seemed to erase. While I scouered the semi-translucent haze on my window, my neighbor, Joyce Beene, drove by and rolled down her window, “Is your family alright?” she shouted across my yard.
“I think so. Why?” I hollered back.
“Have you seen the news?”
“We don’t have a TV,” I replied. The bright day filtered through the pines forcing me to squint a little to see her.
“You’d better come over and see what’s happening. Two planes crashed into twin towers in New York.” In shock, I raced upstairs to get Dean. Together, we hobbled over barefoot through the woods to Joyce’s house.
Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw—both towers in flames, holes in their sides, people jumping off rooftops to their death. John, Joyce’s husband, who’d shot an elk earlier in the morning, was cleaning it in the kitchen. He appeared now and then to inspect the TV and pink pools of water followed him on the floor. The blood clotting on his hands and smeared on his face only added to the carnage unfolding on the screen.
We were glued to The Beene’s couch for the next two days, returning home only briefly to make food or take a hike to cleanse ourselves of what we’d seen. We slept, knotted in one another’s arms as though we might lose each other in dreams. The country was traumatized and we along with it. The twins had come down but it was the whole world was falling apart around them. What would become of us? Nothing was clear except my love for Dean, his for me and the certainty that we could be each other’s strength through the chaos.
Once through the metal detector at DIA, I turn out to be one of ten people flagged for a random search. I’m escorted to a small room where there are men with badges and tight polyester midnight blue pants wearing semi-automatic weapons and I can’t tell whether I feel more or less safe in their presence. The woman in front of me packed a clothing steamer in her carry on. She had, to both our chagrin, also thrown her alarm clock in with it, making her otherwise innocuous red luggage look suspiciously bomb like. Suddenly, there are dogs and more men with more weapons and a very embarrassed woman and another hour tick tick ticking away…
My therapist warned me to keep an eye on my depression. “Your PTSD predisposes you to the sadness of this time in our national history,” she’d said as I was leaving our last appointment. I told her I’d keep my finger on the pulse but assured her I’m made of pretty tough stuff.
The plane, like the terminal, is eerily empty, and we’re requested to ignore our seat assignments and proceed to the back of the plane to balance out the unexplained extenuating weight in the cargo space below.
My dad’s not at the terminal when I arrive. There are new restrictions around airport pick-ups at gates. Instead, he sends a car to escort me to the hotel in Bozeman. It’s been a while since we last saw each other. He’s had twins since then. I’m not sure how we’ll find one another. But when I see him, all quiet and reserved and glad to see me in his glasses and green sweatpants outside room #181, I feel the drought of fear subside. We hug and catch up on the edge of his bed in the gray rayon, halogen-lit room.
When there’s nothing left to say, we trudge down the hall and do a load of laundry in the coin op. Between cycles, we catch a makeshift workout in his room. This form of fitness has been a James Taylor Tour signature for as long as I can remember. We create designated stations utilizing door jams for lat pull-downs, furniture for bench presses, balcony ledges for calf raises and bath towels for floor mats. Dad excitedly retrieves something called “The Ab Slider,” from his bag. It’s a rarity to have a piece of legitimate gym equipment in our make-shift routine. He explains that it’s something he found on a late-night infomercial and demonstrates its uses before letting me try.
It’s great to be with my dad—to be on his road with his touring patterns and rituals. His familiar fitness breathing pattern is a balm for my nerves and we forget to talk about the state of the nation or the state of our family, and find ourselves back in the state of our small lives — talking about small problems and joys and memories and something called “Total Tiger,” another infomercial product dad’s dying to get.
It’s in these small conversations about small things, we find a way to connect — to forget that the world’s crumbling down around us, forget to be scared and threatened and tragic — and instead find ways to pick up the pieces, forge new memories and be grateful for what’s left.