A 9/11 Flag and Losing Osama

     I was in my office the morning of 9/11. My secretary came in and said ‘a plane has flown into the World Trade Center.’ I kept working, not wanting to rubberneck. I did not walk down the hall to see what was going on until she came back, in tears, and said ‘a second plane has hit the other tower.’ So that’s how a living, decade-long nightmare starts.

     Two days later, like almost everyone else, we went out and bought a small American flag. We tied it to a fence post along the front of our field. Nearly everyone flew a flag, even those of us who are not the flag waving type. I decided then the flag would fly until the nightmare ended.
     It was a shockingly sad time but we were united in grief and horror. Not just in the US, either. I remember the headline on September 12, 2001 from Le Monde in France: “Nous sommes tous Américains,” or “We are all Americans.” Hundreds of thousands marched in support of the US. In Berlin. That unity obviously faded. Maybe now it is coming back.
     We heard the news bin Laden was dead this past Monday morning. We were getting the kids out the door for school. We were listening to a Canadian radio station so the story was first but not blaring as the CBC began its newscast. Given that understated Canadian way, it took a minute to sink in what the announcer was talking about. Jackie looked at me, and I thought for a second. Commandos, Pakistan, Obama, Osama.

     Our eight-year old daughter, who has lived her entire life under the shadow of 9/11 and the serial wars of this past decade, asked, ‘who’s Osama’? The radio announcer had just told us he was shot in the head and then ‘buried at sea’ (the best euphemism I can think of for ‘body tossed overboard’). When what had happened sunk in my initial feeling was, ‘good.’ Shot in the head and tossed overboard. Good.
     To be honest, I had not thought about Osama bin Ladin in a long time. Of course I read the news from each war every day. I follow the politics and military news, the plots thwarted in one country or another, the attempt to end enmity for America while shooting, the new surge of liberalism and democratization trying to take root in dry soil. But Osama has been out of mind. Life simply crowded him out.
     Although the news of all of our wars does wash over us it doesn’t really stick any more. The focus this spring? Organizing Little League and getting a few projects off the ground. The storms and floods of April. School being cancelled because of a thunderstorm. The little league fields being ruined in the rain and scrambling to figure out when we can practice and trying to schedule games between the storms. In fact, flooded little league fields were going to be the topic of this column until listening to that Monday morning newscast.
     The flag hanging on the fence post needed to come down some years ago. I moved it to the front of the house. A few years more passed and the flag tore from its staff. I tacked it then to the side of the house, sheltered from the weather. The symbol at our house of this long nightmare sat in the background.
     In the same way, the nightmare of Osama these past several years ran in the background. It has been like living with a bad cold. We try to ignore it and get on with work and life and we don’t realize how bad it feels until one day it goes away. There is nothing like killing a monster to snap things into perspective.
     The old fence around the field by our house, where our small 9/11 flag first flew, is long gone. Our kids are growing fast. Life is busy and full. The flag still hangs, tacked to the clapboard on the side of the house under the shelter of the front porch. It will be there a few years more, I’m afraid. 

     By no means is the threat of attack gone or the world stable and secure. But at least for now, at least for a few days, it feels like there might come a day when I can finally take that flag down. It will be a long haul still. For a few days though it all feels better.


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio