I still am not over my home being bombed. I don't think I ever will be. If I wander into the memory of my feelings around that time tears quickly flood my eyes.

I was on the couch yesterday, stretched out like a lovely dog basking in the warm glow of the tournament. I had barely moved for four glorious days. From noon to midnight Thursday, Friday (Week days! Are you kidding me?! Heaven on earth once a year!) Saturday and now Sunday. It was halftime of the afternoon games and Mark Granderson popped into my head. He had written me an email a week ago through this site and gave me his number.

"Hey Eric. It's your old friend Mark Granderson. Give me a call. We have a lot to catch up on. Do you still have a decent jump shot?" And he left his number. I have way fucking more then a "decent" jump site by the way. I rain 3's in the faces of 6'5" guys while waving to my girl in the stands thank you very much.

Mark was my best friend in eleventh grade when I lived in Vermont. Like me, he was a flatlander transplant, not having grown up "in country" but having moved there with his father from a more civilized place. That's no knock on Vermont, please, I love it there but in 1979, the joint was fucking ass backwards still. Seriously. I mean they always had their progressive niche but the majority of people were redneck through and through.

Mark and I bonded, both being refugees. Immigrants in a strange land. We would drop copious amounts of acid and snow hike on the Appalachian Trail, spending the nights in sub-zero shelters sprinkled along the 1000 mile path. Our packs were filled with more Tequila than food and our lungs with more Panama Red smoke than fresh mountain air. It was during one of these nights that the report of the plane carrying most of the band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd had crashed, killing them. It was tragic. They were our heroes, along with all the other north country staples Led Zeppelin, The J. Giles Band, Bad Company, and Deep Purple.

I hadn't seen Mark since I so randomly bumped into him on a Subway in New York 10 years ago, nearly 20 years after last seeing him in high school. He was doing well, had a small child from an ex-wife and was in the Coast Guard stationed in Staten Island, guarding our great harbor. We had a nice chat between 14th street and Times Square and headed off in separate directions.

I called him up. It's important to remember I have a history. I can easily forget and feel like a satellite. It doesn't feel good. It feels very lonely. Remembering I have a past helps me to know who I am. Not being married and having kids at this point in my life like many, is just one more isolating factor of my life in addition to my already isolating personality.

"Hey Mark, Eric Schaeffer."

"Oh my God! Hey Eric. I can't believe you called!"

"Of course, I'm sorry it took me a week. I've been slammed." With being depressed and watching basketball.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure you're busy. You've clearly done really well for yourself in the last 10 years since I saw you on the subway." Yeah, being depressed and watching basketball.

"Oh thanks." I hate compliments like that. I know they're meant well but they scare me. From the outside my life seems so much different to people than it feels in me. I am sure I'll never work again; most people assume I'm on easy street without a care in the world. I also don't like to take too much credit for my accomplishments. I really feel more like a conduit than an originator. All praise be to the Great Spirit. But it's fun when I'm used.

Mark and I started talking about his life. I don't like much talking about mine. I do that publicly; privately I'm more interested in yours. Mark has a new wife and two new boys with her to add to the fourteen year-old son he already has. She's a doll and likes the outdoors like Mark. He seems very content.

We started talking about where we would have a steak dinner. He suggested a place way downtown in the financial district. That got us talking about Staten Island which got us talking about his new job which got us talking about his having left the Coast Guard after 26 years which got us talking about how he watched the second plane hit.

He was on a boat, in the harbor, a hundred feet off shore from the World Trade Center, having been deployed when the first plane hit. He watched the second plane fly towards him from the Verazzano Bridge, bank right and smash into the World Trade Center. For some reason I imagined both planes had come down the Hudson from the North.

"No, the second plane was from Newark." He reminded me.

"Oh right." I had never known that. I knew the first one was from Boston. Details like that I don't really care about. I'm too busy weeping and praying to take an interest in the minutia of evil. Larger more important discussions I can find value in the right context and at the right time, and sometimes like to know facts but generally I feel my energy can be more helpful spent elsewhere in a tragedy.

I told Mark my story of that day.

I was in LA about to leave the hotel and fly home. I was checking out and the guy at the front desk said, "Have you seen the news?" I said, "No."

"You better go back upstairs and look at it." Tears well now upon recalling. I returned to my room and turned on the news. I sat for ten hours on the bed glued to the TV, trying to call my mother every twenty minutes for the entire time, unable to get through. When it was clear that no one knew what was happening or when flights would resume and I couldn't find out if my mother was alive or not, I decided to rent a car and drive 100 mph straight home across the country. Although she had no reason to be in that area let alone in one of the Trade towers, God only knew if for some bizarre reason she had been. I couldn't sit on that bed anymore. My home was on fire and I couldn't reach my mom. I had to move. So I did...

To be continued...

Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 4:02 PM

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