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September 11, 2006
Woken up by my mother
Serving in Peace Corps in Uzbekistan showed me a whole new world and challenged how I viewed myself and my country. I lived with two different Uzbek families, mixing my life with theirs. This was the 30th birthday celebration for me at the lycee where I taught.
Living in Uzbekistan was a little crazy, to say the least. Every Independence Day celebration in Uzbekistan was a time of lockdown for PC Volunteers, because this crazy terrorist guy named Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban had staged a terrorist attack on the capital of Tashkent back in 1999, and was continually staging on the shared border. We only knew that this nutcase tried to kill the President of Uzbekistan because of his secular government (not because of his horrifying human rights violations). My final winter in Samarkand resulted in serious weight loss and then my accident that ripped apart my knee. I was medically evacuated to DC, leaving behind my teaching job, my new family, and most of my belongings.
My knee surgeries in DC not only resulted in weird gristly bits of my knees repaired or replaced, but also in meeting my new boyfriend Daniel. I met him while getting off the subway looking for my doctor's office. Daniel was in DC for a job, but lived in NYC. We got close. I visited NYC.
(I was on a coffee drinking theme on this trip)
All I could muster was 'wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.' I'd live/visited in London, Moscow, Paris, LA, Tashkent, Dallas. Nothing compared to NYC. I knew exactly where I wanted to live. Even moving around on crutches, I was determined to see all of it. I had Krispy Kreme donuts for the first time at the base of the WTC complex. When you looked up, the sky blurred into building, although that could have been an effect of the sugar. Daniel and I debated going to the top, but the line was really long, and I was still on crutches.
I made plans to move there, get a job as a teacher. I was going to move in December/January, once my doctor released me from physical therapy in Lubbock. Daniel and I did the long distance relationship thing. It was horrible. I wanted to be in NYC. I wanted to start the next phase of my life, but I was stuck in Lubbock limbo.
My mom woke me up five years ago by saying 'we've been attacked.' She then hung up. My mother was never anything but efficient AND melodramatic.
I watched in horror as it happened live on TV. I cried out when the first tower collapsed, woke up my roommates. We all watched, as I tried to call my boyfriend. When I finally was able to reach him, I talked to him, got off the phone, then went back to the TV.
My PC friends in Uzbekistan were evacuated en masse quickly thereafter, and I drove up to DC/NYC from Texas. I remember driving one of my friends around the Pentagon as she cried, drinking in the evening, talking all the time. We had lived in a place far away from the US, but it came to our home in a way that we couldn't have anticipated.
The boyfriend dumped me for another guy. I still moved here, the place that I knew I could really fit. The city had been injured, but so had I. I recovered after extensive physical therapy, and I knew it would recover too. I sometimes wonder what my life here would be like if the event from five years ago had not happened, both to me and the city. Maybe I would be working somewhere in Texas. Maybe I would be somewhere overseas, learning new languages, getting new food poisonings. I know that I look at my life now, at all the richness of my friends and family here, and I know things are good.
Posted by G at September 11, 2006 08:22 PM
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Comments
Well, we're all glad you moved out here. And our lives are richer for it.
Posted by: Joephet at September 12, 2006 08:14 AM
Well written, G. Very well written.
I'm happy to see that day five years ago didn't scare you away. The city is richer for it, I'm sure.
Posted by: Stephen J. Xanthos at September 12, 2006 01:06 PM
So lovely a post! :-)
Posted by: PatCH at September 13, 2006 07:40 AM
Forking paths are funny, aren't they?
Posted by: Randy McDonald at September 13, 2006 06:32 PM
A great post! Even though I've been reading your blog for some time now, there was a lot about your past that I didn't know.
Posted by: Thom at September 13, 2006 08:08 PM
i find you totally hot in that picture. but as i've said, you're the most photogenic blogger i know.
Posted by: myke at September 29, 2006 07:51 PM