Twenty-two years ago I walked into the department office to find the administrative assistant staring in horror at her computer screen. "We're under attack!" she said. Pretty soon we were all wandering around dazed, trying to keep ourselves and our students from bursting into tears in the middle of--well, everything. For a while I couldn't even listen to the radio on the way to work because I can't drive while sobbing.
This morning I didn't even think about the significance of the date. I woke up bubbling with happy plans and then took a Covid test that immediately plunged me back into misery. Still positive. I'm allowed to return to campus tomorrow as long as I wear a mask and don't have a fever, but I had hoped to put this virus behind me more definitively.
To distract from the persistence of Covid, I've been responding to students' writing assignments, prepping Wednesday's classes, processing a massive pile of kale, and baking a caramel apple cake, which was only a partial failure. It's a new recipe and I had some doubts from the start about the amount of butter it called for, and then my doubts increased when I had trouble incorporating the butter into the batter. And then I baked it and ended up with butter all over the bottom of the oven, butter oozing from the cake pan, butter now solidifying alongside the rich apple caramel cake. I like the apple/cinnamon/clove/caramel flavor combination, but the end product looks more like a pile of slop than a cake.
There's now a pile of dirty dishes in the sink but I think it's time to step away from all messes and walk out into the sunshine. It was a sunny day 22 years ago when the planes struck the towers, releasing clouds of smoke, fear, and terror that did not easily dissipate. Faint wisps linger even now, for those who know where to look. But sometimes what I really need to do is to look away.
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