The Day Before

For nearly a year, we have been telling each other exactly where we were on Sept. 11, when we heard “the news.” Everything about that terrible day is specific in memory, and the specific links us to a common grief.

But I keep wondering about the day that came before--the day so hard to remember--when all was normal.

Sept. 10, last year, fell on a Monday. On my desk calendar, there is a notation to leave a check for the man who cleans my apartment. Nothing else.

What did I accomplish on Sept. 10? I am sure I worked. Whom did I see? I had dinner at home, I suppose. I watched TV, probably. Took exception to something; I always do.

The ancient Christian church described days of the liturgical year that were not feast days--the Mondays and Wednesdays of our lives, those days without cakes or bells or rose-colored vestments--as belonging to “Ordinary Time.” The liturgy of Ordinary Time is unchanging; prayers are always the same.

On a secular American calendar, Sept. 10 belongs irretrievably to ordinary time. It is the sort of day to which memory can never clearly return us. It was a day for errands and sluggish freeway traffic and paying bills and running late. The stock market on Sept. 10 was down, but only a little. The weather map showed a mild day, clear, across most of the nation. On the front page of the newspaper, there was a story about the discontent of some Mexican farmers--that, and Israelis and Palestinians.

Did I even skim the headlines that morning?

Americans are notorious for an obliviousness regarding the great world. It is not only our children who are inattentive, who graduate from high school or who switch channels without any idea of which language is spoken in Brazil or which nation is the world’s largest democracy or which religion is destined to become, in this century, the world’s most populous.

Indeed, our public face, our conversation--our “culture”--most days appears to the world as childish and without complexity. Political discussion on television is a game of tag between “on the left” and “on the right.” The air is full of celebrity gossip. And the question of Monday morning is, “Seen any good movies?”

I sometimes meet a woman in my neighborhood, a woman born in Germany. Our ceremony is to stop for several minutes, to talk about American politics. My neighbor ended one conversation with a shrug, a disclosure of prejudice: “Oh, but this is not a serious country.”

Last year, on Sept. 10, the most popular movie in America was “The Musketeer.” Oprah Winfrey’s guest was Dr. Phil McGraw. A top nonfiction bestseller was Stephen Ambrose’s “The Wild Blue,” a book about American pilots in World War II.

Only a year ago, Americans were infatuated with books about the heroics of GIs at Normandy Beach and at Guadalcanal. The World War II generation, themed “the Greatest Generation,” was leaving the earth and younger generations were in awe. But the subtext of this literature raised a lingering doubt: Does the postwar, postmodern, post-1940s generation have “the stuff”?

Heroism cannot be anticipated or arranged, even by New York book publishers. In ordinary time, we cannot guess which of the people standing alongside us on the subway platform or in the elevator are heroes. On Sept. 10, certainly no one in America imagined that histories of World War II heroes would be replaced on bookstore shelves by books about New York City cops and firemen.

Several months before this first anniversary of Sept. 11, television and newspaper polls counted a majority of Americans who described their lives as having returned to “normal.” It was as though, for the entire year, we needed to tell ourselves that we had gotten back to Sept. 10.

The popular culture cranked and sputtered and whined, resumed its impulse to fill time with noise.

The TV ratings sensation this summer is a teenage talent competition. The most popular movie of late summer is a movie about conceptual artists from outer space. But the nonfiction bestseller is “Let’s Roll!” by Lisa Beamer, with Ken Abraham.

Heroism is dependent upon catastrophe and the extraordinary day. More than half a century ago, a bunch of guys named Joe managed to save the world from the nation of Goethe and from the nation of exquisite tea ceremonies.

Americans discovered last year, on Sept. 11, just how much strength and discipline there is in our country. One was reassured by the physical bravery of many and the quiet resolution of many more Americans to live their lives calmly. A year later, and most refuse to turn against their Muslim neighbors, refuse to curtail the freedom of being American, even in dangerous times.

Last year, on Sept. 10, the Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers 3-2. The Oakland Athletics beat the Texas Rangers 7-1. The guest on “Larry King Live” that night was John Edward, the guy on TV who, “at an early age,” realized he could communicate with people who have “passed over.”

I think of late summer evening descending across America on Sept. 10, I imagine televisions lighting windows and telephone conversations filling the night. I celebrate that ordinary night!

I summon Thornton Wilder, the playwright who was one of the greatest inventors of America because he portrayed ordinary time for the stage. His play “Our Town” is about what happens in an American town on an ordinary day, very much like Sept. 10:

STAGE MANAGER: “The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire--just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn. The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the East there.... “

I wonder: Do high school English teachers still give “Our Town” to their students at precisely the moment when kids are most desperate for excitement, most desperate to escape their “boring” adolescent lives? Only to dazzle them with universal thoughts?

In “Our Town,” Emily, a young woman, recently deceased, yearns to revisit the living. She is cautioned by Mrs. Gibbs, a neighbor, long dead, to “ ... choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day of your life. It will be important enough.”

Not a few people I know say they are not going to watch television or listen to the radio Sept. 11. They are tired of the commercialization of tragedy, and the politicians and media commentators who tell us what to feel.

As a media commentator (the author of these words), I understand. I think, in any case, that there is much to learn about America from the boredom, the freedoms, the mundane achievements and routine pleasures of last Sept. 10.

Those among us who suffered the greatest loss Sept. 11 cling strenuously to the strands of routine memory that connect the living with those who drove off to work. This is what Emily learned in the end of “Our Town.”

EMILY: “I didn’t realize. So, all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back--up the hill--to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye; Good-bye, world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners ... Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking ... and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths . . . and sleeping and waking up.... “