Dear Jesse, I can hear the helicopters circling outside. Either it's another gangland takedown or the balloons are attacking tourists again. Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.

How I work

Over the years I realized that waiting till deadlines wasn't helping me. I didn't do a good job, I forgot things, thought of better ideas and wording after the piece had been turned in. By grad school I got myself to change. As soon as I knew what the semester's assignments would be, I'd write an outline, some paragraphs, sketch out my ideas. As I came up with new ideas I'd add to that framework. If I learned something in class that added to my theme, I'd research further and work it in. Sometimes I'd realize I'd taken a wrong turn, but I'd learn so much that it was worth it. Because I'd already gotten the general frame of the paper in my head, I was sensitive to new information and ideas about my subject, and I had plenty of time to follow those leads.

By the time the paper was due, it was truly my own, as finished as I could make it. I never had those pre-deadline headaches, butterflies, and insomnia.  I never had to miss a social event or send my kids off because of a paper. I had plenty of time to study for exams, and the months of picking up new information on the particular subject matter made my exams better, too. It wasn't a matter of working harder, or necessarily longer, just better. I had to give up the adrenaline rush, but higher grades and compliments from professors were better. So was the relief of knowing I'd done my best.

Now I find I work better this way in life as well. I gather up resources for what I want to write. Once I get something on paper, I let it percolate, and let my attention draw itself toward my subject matter. How can I say it so my audience will engage? Empathy helps, but I don't mean walking around as yourself in someone else's shoes. I mean walking around as that person, as best I can, in their worldview. You have to acknowledge stereotypes in order to avoid them. You can't bring a fresh message to a cardboard cutout.  Once you get into an audience's point of view, brainstorm. Put things on paper. Don't edit. If you think of a better way to say something, write it down fresh, rather than mark up your earlier version. This way you capture your trail of thinking. Then let it sit. You need to walk away from all that driven writing. Change rooms, change tasks, change your frame of mind before you go back to it. Your ability to pick out fresh ideas, smart wording, engaging sentences will be much better if you haven't been staring at the lines sitting in front of you all day and night. Fresh eyes are almost like someone else's eyes. Everything you do between that first draft and your first read will inform how you work on the ideas you laid out. Think of it as teamwork with yourself.

He'd be 28.

Probably a lawyer by now. Wife and kids? If so, I'd be a grandmother. He'd be in New York, still, most likely. Settled down, starting to look back at his life and think about everything that happened over the last 3 decades, all the changes he had to go through. I can imagine him at that age, and what his world might be like, but I can't begin to guess how he might have surprised us all with the choices he might have made. I can wish he had the kind of life that made him happy, that made him grow into the person he wanted to be. I wish I could be there. I wish he were.

How to tell time.

A little one room red school house on the slope of a holler in Clay County, KY. Part of me is still there, with all that happened, with the children I met, who are now all old and probably grandparents if they live. Every morning I live on earth gets compared to those dewy mornings, the Kentucky sun slowly etching its way across the wet, dark mountains. A distant farmer already at work, plowing with a mule on the nearly vertical slope of next ridge, defying gravity. Poke shoots, blackberries, wild strawberries pushing their way up through the scrabble at the side of the road-- can't pick it because the coal companies spray it all with poison. I find myself on the coal road in my mind, half an eye out for the speeding trucks spilling coal as they turn, the kids grabbing their leavings, to take home for the furnace. There'd be heat come winter. I went with the other teachers to their family homes, sat on their porches, picking peas and chatting, making room for ourselves in their lives. Getting to know a world so different from my own, a world I recognize in many of the countries I've visited since. I can call it all back in an instant.

But I can't remember how to get there. And there is no one left who knows the way. I am old.

The truth is out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/911-cancer-link-federal-government-zadroga-act_n_1870517.html

At least now I know. I know why Jesse lost his life, why he suffered, who is to blame. I know I can get some compensation for the medical bills, if not the suffering we have all endured. I know his killers are dead. I know the ringleader was hunted down like a dog and shot in his own home. Don't expect me to feel bad about that. Don't expect me to be objective about drones dropping bombs. It may come one day, but right now, I feel a sickening joy at the thought. Someday perhaps I'll have the luxury of being ashamed of the desire for vengeance.

It's more difficult to imagine vengeance on the accessories to his death. They're after all, full of reasons for telling us the air was ok to breathe, that we didn't need to evacuate above 14th Street. That leukemia wouldn't have been caused by breathing the smoke that drifted in our closed windows day in and day out. Jesse's brother wore a surgical mask every day until the fires were put out at last, in march. Jesse didn't think it was necessary. His brother didn't spend all of his time here on 17th Street. Jesse did. Not everyone got sick, I know. But what Jesse got, only a few hundred people get in a given year. Around the whole world. And it's on their list. 

There is no word for a mother who's lost her child, because this is how the world works. We give birth with no guarantees. I can never add up the value of life he would have had, the wife, the children, my grandchildren and great grandchildren who will never be; the jobs, the contributions he would have made to the world. I can tell you his intentions. All of us knew who he wanted to be and the changes he was working toward making in the world. Unlike so many 9/11 families, I had 6 extra years with him that thousands did not have. And for that I am grateful and lucky. But like them I have paid dearly. And pay, and pay, and pay.

Happy 9/11, America.