Towers

On the morning before the terrorist attack, I had a dream of two buildings lying on the ground. I was driving a van up a hill and came upon the Texas capitol building lying on its side, the basement exposed like a tooth socket. At first, I was alarmed but then I realized it was just under construction (again). I stopped at the edge of the vast crater and looked in at the ant-sized offices and hallways. Then I got back in the van and drove further up the hill and was shocked to discover that our city's other familiar peak, the UT tower, was laid out across the green south mall, exactly the way J. Frank Dobie thought it should have been in the first place. (He argued that towers were very un-Texan and the University should instead have built a vast front porch as its icon.) Close up, on its side, the tower was white, like the sun-bleached snail shells my son finds in our backyard. The dark basement rooms were now filled with sunlight. I could see the squares of the dull green linoleum which hadn't been changed in years. A worker I queried assured me that when the construction project was completed the tops of both buildings would be easily returned in one piece. Like new.

The next day I did my regular 7:30 a.m. swim practice at Deep Eddy and then the after-swim yakking in the women's dressing room with my teammates. Then I got in the car and turned on the radio.

I was driving through the light at Lake Austin Boulevard and Mo-Pac, heading east, when I heard a woman frantically report that a tower had just fallen. I gripped the steering wheel and looked north. I had just seen an ambulance turning onto the access road, but it was going south, the wrong way. In the next moment I understood which tower she was talking about. I was stunned as the story unfolded.

Obviously, I'm not a psychic. Not only did I dream of totally the wrong towers, but the mood in my dream was all wrong-curious, not cataclysmic.

I spent the day like most people, at work but not actually working. Gathered around the conference room TV, we were uncharacteristically silent. I finally left work early and went to pick up my four year-old son at pre-school.

Though we do not go to church, his school is located at one. He loves the sanctuary, for its colorful windows and its simple otherworldliness. Once we'd collected the usual shoes, socks and drawings we went down the hall and sat on the floor there. It was warm, dimly-lit and completely quiet. I told him something bad had happened today. That Mommy and Daddy and everyone we knew were okay. But it was still an awfu thing. Some bad guys had stolen some airplanes and ran them into some buildings. A lot of people were hurt.

"I'm gonna get those bad guys!" he replied in his tough-boy voice.

"Yes, I know you feel very strong," I replied.

Then I suggested that we silently pray. Cope pressed his fingers perfectly straight against each other, touching his nose with the tips of both thumbs. He looked like he'd been praying every night of his life when, in fact, we've hardly prayed at all. That night, in an act of defiance, we rented a movie, a bad comedy set at Christmas. We didn't finish it.

In all, I know three or four people who lost someone. Someone's accountant, someone's high school chum, someone's dad's friend. In all my trips to New York, I never had any desire to visit the cool blue towers of the World Trade Center. Still, this terror has changed me.

A newfound pride in our country blooms in my chest-it's like admitting I've finally fallen in love when everyone else has known all along. I cry in traffic. I listen to the radio and watch TV compulsively. I mourn a thousand, no, six thousand strangers. I lay out the newspaper on the table like a map. I slip a check into an envelope along with my son's dollar bill. I drive slower and let anyone in who wants it. I've got time to be nice now; I'm beyond polite. I'm writing this essay. But you know the strange thing? Just like in my dream, I am awed by our country's horrible empty sockets, but I am not afraid. I am challenged to seek the higher ground. I am driving a van up the green hill to survey our damaged hearts, the tiny ant-sized rooms. I am searching for the source of the fear and rage and loss that caused this horrible attack. But I am not filled with terror, you terrorists. You failurists, I'm flooded with love.