September 11 was my late mother's birthday. When I called her that morning, I worried about whether to wish her a happy birthday or tell her about the towers.
I don't know why it mattered which I did first. In the light of all that happened, it was such an inconsequential thing to be concerned about. “Say happy birthday first,” I told myself — as if that choice would change things.
We had just moved into a new house, and Peter, our friend and builder, was still around finishing projects. When I heard the news, I called him in from the garage. We stood in the kitchen, in a warren of unpacked boxes, and watched. The only television was an old black-and-white on the counter. Reception was poor and the images indistinct and ghostlike. I don’t remember how long we stood there.
“What do we do?” Peter eventually asked. “Do we go back to work?”
At that time, Amtrak's Vermonter out of New York's Penn Station ran by our house. I'd been anxious about buying a home along the railroad tracks, thinking the noise would disturb us and be a bother. Later that afternoon, Peter and I — unable to get any work done — went out back and waited for the train. It was strangely quiet as it was nearly everywhere. Flights out of Boston that usually traversed the sky high above us had disappeared. While we said nothing, I knew both of us had put all our hopes on that train coming through.
Then we heard it: a deep rumble coming down the tracks from the old Amherst station. It was late, but on the way. As it approached, we couldn’t see much through the trees. But we felt it — the rush of leaves, the ground beginning to tremble.
I played so many mind-games with myself that day: say happy birthday first, wait for the train. I don’t know what I thought I could control with wishful thinking.
But I now know I wanted to hold on to what had been normal for one moment more. The sky — as everyone remembers — was so cruelly blue that morning. I recall looking up and saying to myself — chanting, really: my mother has a birthday, the train will come, we are still here.
Martha Ackmann, who lives in Leverett, Massachusetts, has a new book. "These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson," will be published in February.
