There was a Borders in Fayetteville where I bought a copy of All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland and there was a Krispy Kreme, an old one, where I bought four dozen glazes because I hadn’t eaten one since a road trip to Issaquah and wouldn’t be having them again for a long while. I figured I’d share extras with the guys.
(Our unit didn’t fill out the barracks so I had a bed in the back with an open bunk next to me to stash the donuts.)
I was settling into this little transition before the big transition, almost enjoying Fort Bragg. Earlier that day I had lunch near the PX with my old roommate Estrada, who was a paratrooper now, and it made me glad to see him, but I was also near heartsick because Amelia wasn’t answering my calls and the calls weren’t easy to place because I only had a little time at night and I’d have to cross a long parade ground in the dark to a single payphone, which might be taken, and when the phone was free I’d call the calling card number, and punch in the endless calling card code, and then dial her number, at which point the phone would ring and one of her family would answer and Amelia wouldn’t be home and I’d trudge back to the barracks and join the smokers on the stoop and light m one of the few cloves I had left.
(The switch to real cigarettes happened later that month.)
After the third night in a row of Amelia not being home I went back and ate maple glazed donuts and smoked some more cloves and woke up the next morning looking out the barracks window, sad and lonely.
But the sun was rising on a clear sky and one nice thing about the Army is you keep going, keep momentum, and we had a briefing that morning on the political dynamics in Bosnia which I was kind of looking forward to, though the briefing ended up being as boring as all the others. Boring, that is, until the Captain came in and told us a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
(I pictured a Cessna.)
“Probably f—n’ with us for training,” said Black, who was sitting next to me.
There were murmurs and we got back to the briefing, but then, a bit later, the Captain returned and told us a second plane had hit and the first tower had fallen.
Thank you, Jordan. Here are my related words to the congregation this morning as we opened worship: "Before announcements, it is worth our time to mark some important days together. 21 years ago on this date, of course, terrorism took on a new dimension not just for the United States, but for the world. I remember walking into the church that Tuesday morning—it was just my 2nd week at Lake Grove—and Pastor Bob Sanders saying “our world changed today.” We remember the victims, we continue to deplore terrorism in all forms, and we commit ourselves to the ways of our Lord, the Prince of Peace."