Everyone is talking about the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and it's good to look back on that day, and take stock, but that's not all I want to do here.
I officially sold my house today. The closing was this afternoon. When I reflect on how my life has changed since 2001, I realize that the different phases of my life seem to all go in twenty year cycles. Today marks the beginning of a new cycle, at about 19 years since the last turning point, but close enough.
Twenty years ago I was working as a paralegal at a local company, in their legal department, and I still liked to get on an airplane occasionally and travel. It never occurred to me anyone would want to take my nail file out of my checked bag, or throw away a jar of peanut butter in my backpack, because of terrorism.
I was driving into work and I heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center buildings. I figured the pilot must have had a heart attack, or be really drunk, to do something so wacky.
A few hours later I drove home in shock, wondering if the world was coming to an end. My mother had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and she had told me on the phone, in an icy calm voice, to go to the bank and pull out cash, as much as possible, and to fill up the car with gas, and buy bottled water. Mom believed in being prepared for any emergency. She kept enough canned food in her pantry to live on for a couple of weeks.
It never even occurred to me on that mild fall day in 2001 that the world had changed profoundly, and the next twenty years of my life would be incredibly busy, and completely different from the years that had gone before.
I decided to give up the Husband Hunt and become a mom on my own, after I went to Russia to sing Handel's Messiah in January 2003. A short time later my mom and I decided to share a house so she could help me raise my daughter. We bought our house together in early 2005.
I didn't know when I met the tiny little girl in the orphanage in 2003 that she was 11 years old. I thought she was about 7. I had asked God for a miracle a few months before. I wanted to be a mother, but I couldn't see how it was ever going to happen. Alesia was the answer.
My choir wasn't even scheduled to sing at her orphanage. It was a last-minute thing, after one of our concerts canceled. What would my life be like if I had never gone to that orphanage? I don't want to think about it.
A couple of years later, I adopted my son Michael, from Kazakhstan. He was 10. I had a long layover in Frankfurt when I was bringing him home and Michael and I were both scrutinized meticulously. Michael was "wanded." My laptop was "tested." The Germans are serious about security.
Michael is missing his right hand, due to a frostbite accident when he was five years old. It barely slows him down, though. He now works as a cook in a restaurant, something most people who don't understand limb differences would never foresee.
I never thought I'd try to raise two special needs kids. (Alesia has an auditory processing disorder.) They were just kids. You don't love a child less just because they have issues. All kids have issues, it's just not always obvious what they are until you get to know them.
We have had so many happy times here in this old house in northeast Atlanta. It's only a few minutes away from the condo where I lived as a singleton for years.
Now my kids are grown and my mom passed away last year. I keep looking around the house and seeing them here, though. I see my kids playing a game on the dining room table, or riding bikes down the street.
I see Mom eating breakfast in the kitchen, and watching TV.
I see my brother coming in on holidays to be with us.
I see my friends visiting, and having long chats with them in the kitchen or the family room.
The events of twenty years ago marked a distinct division in my life. The phase I just finished was what I will probably come to think of as the Caretaking Years. It was a welcome relief after the tumultuous Husband Hunting Years. The last few years, seeing my mom's health go downhill, were really hard, though.
Now that my house is sold, I will be in an apartment for a year or so while I regroup and decide what to do next and where to do it. I have loved living in Atlanta, but if I can find a good job working from home, I might relocate. The Atlanta traffic is a nightmare. We passed a car on fire heading home after the closing. Yikes. The tall buildings, fire, and smoke were eerily reminiscent of that day twenty years ago, but on a much smaller scale, of course.
I hope and pray our country never goes through anything like a 9/11 attack again. I hope and pray our leaders help us avoid that nightmare.
I also hope the next phase of my life, the next twenty years, will be a peaceful and creative time. I am planning two more novels, once life settles down again.
I hope my kids prosper. I hope I might have a grandchild or two to spoil, one day. I will tell my grandchild about 9/11, and about meeting a little girl in an orphanage, and about living in a blue house, in a lovely and peaceful neighborhood, during the Caretaking Years...
