It is humbling when circumstances outside your control change your perception of yourself. For instance, it is so humbling to realize you're not as young as you once were. Aside from the persistent limp from knee surgery and the fact that I'm still doing rehab like 12 weeks after surgery, there are the events from yesterday.
So we went to Rye Playland with the Sunday School. I was gonna drive up and take some of the teens. I'd leave later, I said, because I have my Saturday morning water aerobics class. Except I didn't go to it. I was out late Friday night watching the Liberty win in New Jersey. Even though I took the tunnel back instead of the GW Bridge, it got me home about 10:30. That's later than I'm usually out. Not sure what time I went to bed, but I struggled on Saturday morning and just didn't make it to class.
At 10 am, I called the kids to be ready at 11. One of them lives in the Bronx, but at 10:30, when I'm stepping out of the shower, he calls to tell me he's at the church. So I go pick him up, and then we spend another half hour or so hunting down the other kids who aren't at church and aren't at home. They showed up at chuch by shortly after 11, though.
So we get in the car and head up to Rye. Me and four teenaged boys. That was probably the first mistake. They're delightful kids, they're just teenaged boys. Different world. I'm cranking gospel music, they all have on headphones with hiphop or whatever that noise is they listen to. Since listening to gospel music was a condition of their riding with me, and since I'm apparently going deaf, and since cheap headhpones really annoy me, I announced the "I'm gonna drown out your headphones" challenge. We finally got to a point where I could play my music and didn't have to listen to theirs.
We got to the amusement park before it opened. It was the weekend after Labor Day, and at first there weren't a whole lot of people there. Since my role with the church is different from my role with the Council, I could be free to enjoy myself. So I took off for the Superman ride. Properly called, Superflight, it's a roller coaster ride where you're laid out prone. I rode it three times during the day. I rode the Dragon Coaster with the boys. We all rode the Double Shot. I think we all rode the Catch A Wave. I rode the Crazy Mouse. Then I rode the Whip with some of the kiddies. Did the go carts and bumper cars with them, as well. I did Thunder Bolt (which is sorta like the whip but the cars rotate independently as well) by myself, and Wipeout (which had centrifugal force so strong I swore to myself that the ride was breaking). I was trying to go into Starship 2000, but ended up in the Sky Flyer, which has you in a contraption and you swing back and forth like a pendulum until you eventually turn all the way over. You're like a coupla stories up in the air, upside down. I remember my cross falling all into my mouth and worrying that the chain might fall off my inverted body....
I got some ice cream and was trying to decide which ride to go on next when the boys called. It was only 6:30, but they were at the car and ready to go home. So we left. I dropped them all off at home, and had come home and gone to bed by 9:30 pm.
So you'd think I'd be fine by 9:30 this morning, but that was not the case. First of all, I had these bizarre dreams where I didn't know who I was, and didn't know where I lived. I remember waking up going, "it's ok. You're at YOUR house!" I thanked God for being able to awaken in my right mind and in my own bed. But I am worried that all the shaking and flipping and turning might have caused some sort of brain injury. These things happen when we're older. Plus, I've had this tremendous headache all day. After church, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Stew Leonard's for croissants and lobster salad, then came home and went to bed.
And, of course, the fact that I'm up writing about it is probably indicative of the fact that I don't have a brain injury. It's just that old age makes a day at the amusement park the source of aches and pains (although that whip ride is as good as a chiropractor for the back!).
As I write this on September 11, 2011, I am aware of the events which changed our city, our country, and our world 10 years ago. That was a day when the US was, some say, humbled. Circumstances outside our control certainly changed our perception of ourselves. I was in midtown Manhattan, and remember the chaos and confusion -- cellphones didn't work, and that's when Blackberries became really popular, because they DID work when the cellphones were down. I remember how public transpo didn't work -- I couldn't get on a bus or train going uptown, so I ended up going down to Broadway and Lafayette. There was an Indian-run store there, and I knew they wouldn't close, so I went shopping, in sight of the huge toxic cloud that emerged from where the towers had once stood.
My job at the time was on Fifth Avenue, right across from St. Patrick's Cathedral. I remember how I couldn't really process grief about the attacks, so I just became weary of all the funerals. There were several funerals a day for weeks, it seemed. Fifth Avenue was always closed, there were always grieving people and pictures of fallen firefighters. There was an oppressive spirit in the air, but at the same time, if it's possible, there was a liberatory spirit. Even in the midst of burying and mourning the dead, Americans -- especially New Yorkers -- came together in solidarity and patriotism. For a while after 9/11, New Yorkers were actually nice to each other. And that's when all the busses and many businesses started using the American flag stickers. It's like in the midst of everything, we realized that as New Yorkers and as Americans, we still managed to hang onto the ties that bind us together.
And we move along, we still manage to be bound together. Despite the cloudiness that fogs the mind as I get older, I know that the United States of America will continue on, standing strong and proud. We may be temporarily humbled by circumstances outside our control, but we will continue on. Even in my old age, I can see that....
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