Posted by Diana S. on September 18, 2001 at 17:35:44:
WARNING – long, drawn out discourse of mine that I had to put into words and thought I would share here. Sorry, if I wear you out!
I have just returned this morning from a trip to Boston, scheduled many months ago. Did I fly? No, flight details were sketchy, my daughter had real anxieties, I had a state car available since this was a "work" trip, and so I resolved to drive the 14 hours for a Monday morning meeting in Boston.
I tried to gently nudge my brother or my ex-husband to perhaps ride along for safety's sake, but both had other plans and wished they'd had more notice - Yeah, me too! BUT what I have experienced this weekend, I will never, ever forget and am thankful to have had the time to do this alone.
As I planned the trip some time ago, I made time on Sunday for seeing some sights in Boston, but with the weekend being chewed away by driving time, I found I only had time to walk the Freedom Trail (after 3 hours sleep since I had driven all night). That was OK though! After the attack on New York and the Pentagon, I was a bit wary of traveling through those cities as you can imagine, but I had the strongest resolve in getting to that Freedom Trail on Sunday and the Monday meeting could not be rescheduled.
I passed through Washington, DC about 11PM, and could smell smoke as I neared the city. As I passed around Washington on I-495, I could look to the left and see the Washington Monument in the distance. What a proud sight THAT was! Next, I proceeded to get lost trying to find a restroom (everything was shut down), about to wet my pants…never did find that restroom, I’ll spare the details of my solution!
I had never driven in this part of the country before, so I was very keen to view any skylines or sights I might spy, even at night. As I neared the end of the New Jersey Turnpike, I saw many smoke stacks from what I presumed were refineries and factories. Off to the right in the distance, was the UNMISTAKEABLE, well lit, smoldering of lower Manhattan. To say I gasped would be an understatement! No twin brothers soaring at the end of the sparkling buildings that make up that unforgettable skyline, just a smoky monument to the pain of millions of people around the world. Now I could feel why I had such an urgent need to get to that Freedom Trail. I couldn’t give blood after the tragedy because I it hadn’t been enough days since I’d given last, but I had to make a connection, touch something, do something, pray harder…SOMETHING. I guess I was looking to make some sense of things, knowing there is none to be made. To think of all that was lost will always choke me up!
I arrived after many weary hours, to a beautiful dawn in downtown Boston, had to pee again (damn that coffee), nowhere to go in the downtown area as I was again LOST. I headed BACK OUT OF TOWN, because I knew where the last rest stop was. The toll attendant had taken my money as I arrived in town and had switched booths to meet me heading back out of town. My finger tips were throbbing by now I had to go potty so bad, and the guy says, “Hey now, I’ve seen you before. Are you lost?” I crumpled into tears and poured out my heart about my predicament. He calmly told me to “Pok the cah, ahff da road”…and gave me directions to their own facility under the highway. A real prince of a guy he was, got me on my way with my map quest directions, once again trying to follow the last 30 of the 65 total trip turns that would get me to my hotel just 2 miles away.
I only had 24 hours before I had to be at my meeting and shortly head back south and had two nights sleep to fit in. I rested for a few hours, …sort of, still couldn’t bear to not have the TV on, out of fear I guess. I grabbed a bite, and jumped back in the car to head for the Boston Commons to start that Freedom Trail that was calling me so. I felt so relieved to have a little red line to follow after all the turmoil of the night’s hours. I was awed at all the history that lay in the next 2.5 miles ahead of me. Does red, white, and blue have a smell? I swear I smelled it in the Granary Burial Ground. Cool, damp, shaded, solemn, reverent! I looked upon the resting places of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and the victims of the Boston Massacre that seemed to welcome the thousands of others from the fresh massacres of this week. All Americans who died with freedom in their hearts. There were not many people on the trail this day, I’m sure due to the hampered travel and heavy hearts, but I couldn’t think of a more comforting place for me to be!
Just across and down the street a bit stood King’s Chapel. This chapel was so small, but the inside so moving. This first church of the Puritans had many “boxes” lined in red satin and a pulpit that almost reached the ceiling. The feeling was so strong that an incomprehensible amount of prayers had originated in this very room. As I walked to the front of the church, there was a sign at a kneeling bench just to the left, “This spot was saved just for you”. I accepted the invitation and knelt and prayed with all my might for the families, victims, and rescue workers of the terrorist attacks, for all Americans to not forget what these people I was visiting today had come here for, bled for, died for, lived for… the way of life we have to fight to preserve. I do not consider myself a religious person at all, I probably most often attend the “Church of the Golden Rule”, but I had the most profound feeling that God was sad. I know that probably sounds simple, but it was one of the most moving experiences of my life! As I left the church I walked by the Governor’s box, where George Washington had once prayed and felt he too would have been sad to know of the events of this week. I also noted a memorial at the back of the church, which had inscribed the death of Paul Revere’s grandson, on July 4th, from wounds he sustained at Gettysburg. This moment of freedom to talk with my God and come and go as I pleased, felt like red, white, and blue.
As I reached the Old State house, standing in the spot of the Boston massacre, looking up at the balcony from where the people of Boston first heard the words of the Declaration of Independence, an old pickup truck of teenage boys came down the street blaring their horn, with several of them waving a huge American flag from the bed of the truck. The rippling of the flag and cheering of people in the streets sure sounded like red, white, and blue. Add that to another surreal moment of the week!
A few moments later, while having a Coke and watching the goings on in front of Faneuil Hall from the balcony of a McDonald’s, the square was filled in seconds with Fire Trucks and Fire Department SUV’s. People scampered about to see and to flee. Apparently a bomb threat had been called in. I saw a young white man hand his toddler-sized daughter off to his wife, whose arms were already full of shopping bags, as he ran over to place his body in between a group of teenagers getting rather rough and an old oriental women in a wheel chair. Just to the side an old gentleman was quietly videotaping the confusion. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the whole scene, in the seconds it took for the tapestry to change, looked very red, white, and blue to me.
I continued on, walking under an expressway, into what must have been a “Little Italy” of sorts, to the oldest home in Boston, Paul Revere’s house. Since seeing it in a book I had to read for a history class, I have always wanted to visit it! I was too late to be able to go inside (another time perhaps), so to get a decent angle on the house I stepped across the street to take my picture. As I lowered my camera and turned to cross back over the cobblestone street I twisted my ankle and popped my lip on a stone pole of some kind. Ah, I thought, freedom to be a “Klutz” as I dabbed at the blood on my lip! In reflecting back on my first walk on the Freedom Trail, I realized that the blood that bathed my tongue for that brief moment is surely what red, white, and blue tastes like.
I’m a very selfish girl I suppose, to be so self-involved just days after such a tragedy, but I found great comfort and purpose in that afternoon. Things have changed so much and so little I was reminded as I walked by the Boston Globe Store and viewed a sample front-page image in the window - the Blue Angels flying in formation over the U.S.S. Constitution as it is set back to sail.
This new enemy we will fight in the future is not a person, or a country, it is hatred and fanaticism so strong that few of us can grasp its resolve. I pray for our leaders, our soldiers, and the innocents that will undoubtedly die, in the eradication that must be of this beast. Things will surely change as we fight to keep freedom unchanged!
God Bless America!
D