Nobody asks for it

Rest in peace

Like everyone else, I remember the moment very clearly. I was on MSN at work and the guy I was chatting to said “just heard a plane went into the World Trade Center?” I imagined a light aircraft. I didn't imagine what followed.

We all know what happened that day; we all remember. I don't need to go into detail about the events. What I can tell you is the helpless horror I felt as I sat in a meeting room, thousands of miles away, watching it happen on TV. Seeing my country undergoing a previously unimaginable attack, on a scale we never could have guessed. Knowing that two of the flights were from Boston, the city where I was born.

A co-worker asked me “are you ok?” I slowly nodded. Tears standing unshed in my eyes. Stomach tied up in a tight knot. Trying to take it in.

I'd lived in the UK for 11 years by then. I moved to the UK when the IRA were still bombing London and other English cities on a fairly regular basis, so terrorism was already something I comprehended in a way that a lot of Americans didn't. I'd been around at the time the Lockerbie atrocity happened too. And like everyone else, I was aware of the concept of plane hijacks. The last time the mainland US was attacked by an external force, it was the British in the early 19th century. We're not used to it. It was a shock to many Americans that the rest of the world hated us, but it wasn't a shock to me.

But this was something so nightmarish that nobody in her right mind could have dreamt it would happen. The sheer balls of this attack, the unprecedented scale of it, was something nobody in her right mind could ever have imagined.

I was profoundly relieved that nobody close to me was lost that day. People my family and I knew died though. A tennis partner of my mother's. My parents' parish priest, who gave them spiritual sustenance and kindness. A girl I grew up with in my small town. The wife of one of my brother's co-workers. The grief touched me like a piece of paper scorched at the edges. I watched the footage obsessively. And I cried. God, how I cried.

I also don't need to go into the aftermath. The politics. The war. The thousands of other innocents that died as a result of that terrible day.

What I found profoundly depressing at the time, and still find depressing today, was the tone I saw in a lot of the posts I read on the Internet. Americans had asked for it, commentators seemed to say, with their aggressive foreign policies and cultural imperialism. There was, in some of the comments I saw, a touch of schadenfreude. Take that, America, you global bully! Have a taste of your own medicine! Stop making such a fuss; we've been dealing with this shit for years! It's about time you got your comeuppance!

People were saying this at a time when mobile phones buried under rubble were still ringing, people still desperately hoping that their loved ones didn't make the flight, were delayed on the way to work. Ten years later, as thousands of people struggle with the grief that landmark anniversaries bring, I'm still hearing it.

Here's the thing. People need to separate the people from the policy. The people who died that day, and the spouses, friends, children, siblings, parents that were left behind didn't ask for it. Nobody asked for it. We didn't ask for the war and the further carnage that Bush and Blair unleashed on the world, either. And nothing justifies those deaths. But nothing justifies the death of those innocents on September 11th 2001 either. Don't blur the lines. George Bush didn't speak for all of us. The innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't deserve to die, and more Americans than you give us credit for believe this. Nor did the innocents from America who died deserve it. Of course.

I've seen recently, on Twitter, a fair amount of snideness, and embarrassment about the remembrance ceremonies, and even a bit of anti-Americanism. Complaints about the fact that Americans say 9/11 instead of 11/9, for God's sake. Now is not the time.

I hope that the 10-year marker allows those who grieve an opportunity to move on; to lay ghosts to rest and find peace. While I've watched the aftermath and the deaths mounting upon deaths, the chipping away of civil liberties and privacy, with utter dismay, that doesn't detract from the grief I feel for the terrible wound my country suffered that day.

Rest in peace, all those who lost their lives that day, the civilians, firefighters and rescue services. While we've lived through a terrible day and an equally horrific aftermath, I hope that the 10 year anniversary marks a new beginning.

Image: digitalart at freedigitalphotos.net

Twists in the road

‘Life,’ as the old cliché goes, ‘is what happens when you're making other plans’.

Clichés are clichés for a reason I suppose.

When I was in freshman year of high school (aged 14–15) we did a project called ‘Who Am I?’. I compiled a book documenting my past, my present and what I thought my future would be – right through to an imagined obituary.

My imagined future was as conventional as you'd expect from a girl who grew up in a small town, inexperienced and naive, with a conservative (small ‘c’), traditional upbringing. My dad worked in a white-collar job; my mother was what was then called a housewife and is now called a stay-at-home mom.

If I recall correctly, in my imagined future I married a handsome doctor, and had two beautiful children – one of each, a girl and a boy, of course. We were of course together to the very end. I had a career too (I can't quite remember what career I gave myself – possibly veterinarian, as I was an avid fan of James Herriot at the time). But the main accomplishments in my imagined future were marriage and family. That was the plan.

At around the same age, I tried to imagine what life would be like in the impossibly futuristic Year 2000. I would be 32, I thought, with awe at how OLD I would be, but I still imagined myself married with children, and maybe some career or other. That was the plan.

As I got older, I still imagined marriage and family, though knew I'd have to have a career as…something or other. I abandoned my veterinary aspirations when I realised I wasn't good enough at science. I was good at English, which I went on to study at university, but even as I graduated I had no idea what I wanted to BE. The plan became fuzzy.

I came to London after I graduated. I'd met an English boy on my year abroad and so I'd booked up a return to the UK, with a flight and a visa. That was the plan. But he dumped me months before graduation day. I came over anyway, and thought I'd stay for six months and then return to the US. If I'm honest, I also harboured a hope we'd get back together in the interim. That was the plan.

Of course, we didn't get back together. I lived a miserable few months first in his house, until we had an inevitable screaming row, in which he punched me in the face. I then moved on to youth hostels. After a while I got a part-time job in a bar for £25 a week, and then, at last, a job as a secretary, earning just enough to rent a room. At the bar, I met the man who was eventually to become my husband, and later moved on to a job as an editorial assistant, so thought I'd found both the relationship I wanted and the beginning of a career. Career, marriage, then at some point maybe two beautiful children (one of each). That was the plan.

I didn't go back to the US after six months. I divorced my husband. I don't have the perfect handsome husband or two beautiful children (one of each). Career-wise, I've been fired once, made redundant three times, and been unemployed a further three times due to fixed-term contracts coming to an end. My career in book publishing morphed into online publishing. And as I write, I have no idea what turn my career will take next. That was NOT the plan.

This is absolutely not what I'd imagined, either aged 14 when I did my ‘Who Am I?’ project, or aged 22 when I collected a diploma and boarded a jet to London. When I had to forgo a meal to pay for a youth hostel in London, knowing nobody other than the man who'd just hit me, and with no job, I was terrified. When I divorced my husband, I was terrified. When I first lost a job, I was terrified.

Your P45 is in the post!

Here's the thing though: Each twist in the road has never led me off a cliff, even if it seemed that way at the time. Each time, once I've packed up the baggage and resolved to carry it lightly, I've discovered new scenery and new paths (sorry, I'm beating this metaphor to within an inch of its life – bear with me).

Yeah, the divorce – and much of the relationship leading up to the divorce – was hard. But when I came out of it, I gained a new confidence and appreciation of what I need and deserve. I'm still single, but there's plenty I enjoy about it, and I know that being in a relationship and having a ring on your finger is no guarantee that you'll never be lonely.

I don't have two beautiful children (one of each), or any children for that matter, but as I've aged I've realised I didn't really want them anyway, and thank goodness I didn't have any with my ex-husband. Marriage and children, which used to feature so heavily in the plan, have dwindled in significance to microscopic scale.

I lost some old friends along the way, but I gathered new friends. Those friendships change too, as friends pair off and start families, but I know and value the true friendships. They're friendships I may never have forged if I hadn't escaped the confidence-eroding claustrophobia of my marriage, or left one job to move to the next.

Being out of work sucks, but the move into online publishing injected me with a new enthusiasm, and it's something I never would have found if I hadn't been made redundant. Each loss of a job has always led onto something new and different and the novelty and the opportunity to learn something new keeps me motivated and happy.

Divorced, single, child-free and out of work at my age? Nope, it's not what I ever would have imagined (or chosen). But to quote another cliché, when a door closes a window opens. (When you think about that one literally, it doesn't really make much sense, but go with me here.) And I've chucked the plan out the window. I'm not panicked. I'm curious.

You're not very fat, for an American

It's a blessing and a curse, being an expatriated American who's lived in London for almost 21 years.

A blessing because it's an instant icebreaker in any situation. My accent is weird. Not weird in the same way that my fellow New Englander Lloyd Grossman's accent is weird – that strange, pretentious, grating midatlantic drawl. Just weird in that it can't be placed. I've had all sorts of guesses about where I'm from, ranging from the understandable (Ireland, Canada, the generic "North of England" – presumably the latter due to my flattened vowels), through to the bizarre (South African, Dutch). It seems to me that accents are very important in the UK – an instant way of classifying someone – and so my own accent immediately triggers a line of questioning.

And so the conversation opens – usually in a predictable way. Why did you come here? Do you ever want to go back? Why are you here when you could be in America? (This is normally accompanied by a mournful gesture to the weather, or the delays listed on the board at a station platform.) I have the story down pat and can rattle it out on demand. I don't mind. It's an instant icebreaker, like I say. It's led to some great chats and good friendships and working relationships.

But here comes the curse part. People make an awful lot of assumptions about Americans. I've been asked some real jaw-droppers over the years. "You're Irish-American? Did you donate to Noraid?" (I'm not Irish-American in the "my great-great-great-cousin thrice removed was in Dublin once" way of presidential candidates; my grandparents are Irish and I have an Irish passport.) "Have you ever used a gun?" (The only guns I've ever seen have been in the holsters of the police.) "Americans don't speak proper English." (I've been an editor for around 18 years and I'm a word nerd – say this to me and you'll get a history of the language, including a potted history of lexicography, Webster and Johnson.) "You're not very fat, for an American." (Erm. Thanks?) "Yes, Trish, you're American, but you're not really a proper American." (This is meant as a compliment, and in this intention becomes an insult.)

Americans are fat. Americans are stupid. Americans all wear baseball caps. Americans are religious nuts. Americans are trigger-happy. Americans are bullies. Americans are loud. Americans are brash. I've heard 'em all. And I'll have a response to pull from the dogeared file in my brain labelled Yank-Bashing Response Templates.

Here's the thing though. I'm no rosy-spectacled patriot. I choose to live outside of the US. Part of the reason is the way my country has turned, particularly post-9/11, into a more insecure, paranoid and reactionary place (at least, so it seems to me). In part, it's also because living abroad for my adult life opened my eyes and horizons. I feel more like a foreigner in Boston than I do in London. I use English slang and Anglicised spelling. I can no longer complain or have someone bump into me without saying "sorry".  I sometimes pretend to be English when I'm visiting the US to avoid having to explain why I talk funny even though I was born in Massachusetts.

When I'm asked what my nationality is, I really don't know how to respond. I have an American passport, but I haven't lived there since 1990. I have an Irish passport, but I've never lived there at all. Half of my life has been spent in the UK, where I live, work, play, and even vote.

What am I, then? I've no idea, frankly. I own a baseball cap, but I don't wear it. Make of that what you will.