Ethiopean New Year

It's September Eleventh.

It's been almost five years since I got burnt out on the phrase "September Eleventh." I've never liked how the numerical date itself is our actual relic for the terrorist attacks. Of course I remember "the day," and all my reactions to it: Trying to get ahold of friends in New York, hearing their story of watching towers fall and how they walked home for hours through ash and crowds. The feeling everywhere of imminent vulnerability. How some moving boxes fell over in a crash late one night, and I was out of bed in tears before I knew what happened: at once facing my own mortality and feeling ridiculously safe. The patriotism that pretended not to be political, but planted the seeds for years of war and confusion. It's so universal, it's a cliché. There's really no reason for me to discuss my own memories of September 11, 2001.

But before there was September Eleventh, there were hundreds of other September Elevenths. It was just a date, in late summer or early fall. For generations, people could discuss it, schedule it, and get up in the morning on September 11-- without the clanging syllables ringing heavy in their ears: Sept-EM-ber! Ee-LEV-enth!

September 11, 1999, for instance, was my sister's wedding day. I was the maid of honor. It was 90 degrees in the Wishkah Valley shade. We wore blue dresses, and had bouquets of delphiniums. My beautiful boyfriend and I flew back from Chicago for the weekend. In addition to all the other great things (love, family, Spencer the dog who kept trying to crash the ceremony) I remember my Grandma being there. In a crowd of people at the reception, she called out to my boyfriend from her table, and asked him to come over and be introduced to more relatives. He proceeded to sit with her and be introduced, and was polite and considerate. I don't know what they talked about. I know it impressed other relatives (which is how I learned of it). Just one of those simple little family challenges where everyone is at their best, and it comes together shining for a moment -- that makes a wedding day what it is.

My Grandma died less than two years later. My boyfriend is now my husband. That's the September Eleventh I'd like to remember.

Using the phrase "September Eleventh" to mean "Terrorist Attacks on New York and Washington" is at once too much and not enough. It's overbroad: September will have an eleventh day, year after year, as long our Gregorian-calendar-using civilization survives. At the same time, it's inadequate -- to refer to the terrorist attacks with nothing but the icon "9/11" serves to somehow veil the actual attacks and the actual terror. In my house, we find it more accurate to refer to "The Terrorist Attacks on New York and Washington." Let's hope there will never be more -- and to call the Terrorist Attacks the Terrorist Attacks will serve, indefinitely, to be the most accurate and the most honest way to describe them.

September 11 is somebody's birthday, somebody's anniversary, somebody's first day of school. It also happens to be Ethiopean New Year: A reminder of an entire people, an entire continent, a calendar, for whom my country and its problems are peripheral to their own traditions and celebrations. Even in our pain, our rememberance, and our sense of community, it's important to keep some perspective.

Happy Anniversary, K and J!