My cousin and his wife had a baby girl yesterday. After being induced because doctors feared the baby was too small, their bouncing bundle of “hey!” was 6lbs. 6oz. and totally freaking normal. So happy and so relieved.

I’m going to try to go visit, and I’m torn. On one hand, I shouldn’t show up empty handed, but on the other hand, bringing gifts to the hospital means more stuff for them to schlep home tomorrow. So, I’m thinking bring nothing. Will I look like an asshole? Who knows. 

Thanks to the NJ law that allows anyone to vote absentee, this is the last election at which I will vote in person. From here on, I’m voting absentee by mail, and I cannot even express concretely how much better that makes me feel about voting. I don’t trust the voting machines; I don’t trust that my vote is counted accurately. If not for the American insatiable need to know everything right away, even if there isn’t any information to be had, I think the entire country should vote by mail. Not that anyone would ever support that.

Thanks to the Star-Ledger, Jersey’s mediocre state newspaper, I read a summary of the differences between Clinton and Obama, and based on Obama’s firmer and more detailed attention to fueling American power needs on renewable resources, I was leaning towards Obama, but after a conversation with Hubby’s father, I confirmed that idea. I’m definitely voting for Obama.

(Doncha love how revealing who you vote for is such a weirdly intimate thing? I feel like I just mooned the internet.)

Here’s why:

It’s raining out. Pouring. I keep thinking of the people standing in the pit at Ground Zero reading the names of their loved ones as they cry.

The weird thing about 9/11 is that it’s important, and it’s amazing to think that it was already 6 years ago, but enough time has passed that, I think, no one really knows how to mark the day. Do we get angry? Do we cry? Do we do a good deed? Do we think about the people who went to work same as always six years ago this morning, and never came home? Two wars have started since 9/11, and that plus the passage of time has created a much larger divide between the ways in which people want to process and remember.

I remember in the days following 9/11, when fighter jets flew over my house and the smoke went on for months, everyone felt the same. We were scared and sad, like someone had come and torn out a piece of each of us. It’s so different now, because just remembering doesn’t seem adequate, but what to do beyond that is inadequate as well.

But I do remember that 2,998 people went to work six years ago today, and never came home.

Perhaps one way to remember is to talk about the things that happened in New York in the days following 9/11. I was training for the Avon 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk, so the following weekend Hubby and I walked from 59th and Central Park all the way to Ground Zero. It was about 8 miles. I saw the rubble pile and was not allowed to take pictures as it was a crime scene. I remember the smell and how I worried about Hubby going to work in that smoke. At the time he worked on Wall Street.

I remember the thousand upon thousands of pictures of people, posters from loved ones asking them to call home, come home, let us know where you are. There were literally thousands of people on posters all over Manhattan, people who weren’t going to call, who weren’t coming home. And at the time, their relatives didn’t know for sure if they were alive or dead.

There’s an Orthodox Jewish mitzvah, or custom called “Shmira," which requires that a person stand and pray over the body of a deceased Jew until burial. It’s part of Jewish burial custom - guarding of the dead and consoling of the mourners. It’s also one of the most important mitzvot, because it is a selfless act that can never be reciprocated.

After 9/11, there was a round the clock shmira organized by local Jewish schools and community centers at the city morgue so that someone would stand and pray over the dead, even though at the time there were no bodies to pray over, and certainly no one knew if the remains present were from someone Jewish. I think about those people today, who stood for weeks outside and prayed day and night to watch over the dead, to stay with them until their souls moved to heaven.

I think about all the people who, right now, six years ago, were waiting, and hoping, until they moved to despair and mourning. Six years ago today no one knew what was happening. The following day and the days after, we began to process and move apart to deal in our own way with what had occurred. And now we’re all in different places, united by a shared memory. 

If you’re reading this, you probably know where I came from originally. I’m sure everything here looks familiar to say the least.

Anyway, I can go into the long ass story of why I decided to jump ship, move house, clean up and shove off (etc) but it’s not because of anything specific. It was time for me to stop being so blaze about writing under an easily-identifiable and traceable name, and to pay attention to what I revealed about myself, and by extension my family. So, here I am.

If you’d like to register for member benefits, such as a complete lack of spam from me, please feel free to register using the link on the left. Otherwise, welcome, and enjoy.