Plain old Tuesdays

Everyone has a moment. A vivid moment. And everyone remembers where we were and what we were doing at that moment. We remember all sorts of details, if the sun was shining or the rain was falling or the traffic was heavy. We remember how we felt. I remember the moment our classroom teacher told us John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shot. Linda, Louise and I were mixing poster paint and talking about going to a birthday party. It was a Friday. We loved Fridays. Art classes on Fridays were two hours long. Like a vacation from textbooks. No one talked about art history or the medium. Friday’s art class was just for expression. Talking to classmates was encouraged and then the moment happened while we stood by the messy sink at the back of the class. In that moment, I couldn’t have imagined living to see another moment like Friday, November 22, 1963. As young teenagers, we really didn’t know much about JFK’s life or the crises erupting around the globe. But we were touched by his charisma, his family, his handsome face and shocked by the brutality of his death.

Two years later, in the early evening of November 9, 1965, I was sitting on a TTC bus heading toward Crang Plaza, thinking about the shoes I was going to buy for a Saturday date. As the bus sped along Wilson Avenue, in Toronto, the driver grumbled out loud about a power failure. The traffic lights weren’t working at Jane Street—my stop. I walked toward the plaza, usually open for business on a Friday evening, but that day it was in darkness and the whole area seemed strangely quiet. No shoe shopping for me. I decided to walk the two and half miles home in a city usually bright with street and shop lights but, in that moment, strangely dark. By the time I arrived home, my Mom had hauled out the Coleman stove and was digging around the basement, by candlelight, looking for candles and the Coleman lantern. We had a battery operated radio, but many of the stations we would normally have listened to were down. Since Hurricane Hazel in 1954, my Mom was always prepared for a disaster and neighbours dropped by for food, light and whispers of a Communist Conspiracy to rule the world. Thirty million people without electricity brings out the theories in all of us. Classes were cancelled the next day, although the school was open and power had been restored. I’ve had many moments since 1963 and 1965: graduations, my first job, marriage, children, home ownership, deaths in the family and even a few “aha” moments.

In 2001 I was, literally, on top of my world. I though the year would be “my moment.” I had recently completed a post-graduate program and was a few years into “the job of my life.” I remember the day ending as bizarrely as it had begun. By three in the afternoon, three shellshocked women—Susan, Diane and I—were in a waterside restaurant in Wellington ignoring our lunch, hoping the drinks would make all of the day’s moments all right. Earlier in the day, I was sorta blissfully unaware of the drama taking place in NYC as I held my ground in a business meeting. I was having a very defining moment with a couple of blockheads who just didn’t get the HR problems at my worksites and I was too tired and too fed up to spell it out for them, yet again. September 11, 2001 was the day I threw in the towel and offered to clean out my desk. I walked away from a job I loved. That was a moment to remember. The “meeting” had started at 8:30 a.m. Outside, in the real world, the first plane hit the North Tower around the time I figured I was going to walk away from the stupidity my work life had become. I finally ditched the fun just as the South Tower took a hit, and as I quickly scooped out my desk drawers, the Pentagon building had been struck. I was still having my moments and the world was having quite another. By 10:30 a.m. I was sitting in my living room, talking on the phone, to my legal advisor. For some reason she was crying and told me to hang up and turn on the television to CBS. She wasn’t crying about my moment. My real moment started as an American newsreader cried through the moment-bymoment piecing together of the events of 9/11 in New York City. For the next two and half hours I was riveted to the couch, trying to make sense of a world that had, obviously, awakened on the wrong side of the bed and was hell-bent for destruction.

After those drinks with my co-workers, I headed back home and finally gave into crying about what a shitty day it really had been, all around. September 11 had been a day filled with countless “moments” for so many people who had just wanted it to be Tuesday. Whatever your theory is regarding 9/11, it was just supposed to be Tuesday for all of those innocent people, their families and their friends. Just a Tuesday in September.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca