Ripples from a stone cast into still water: A 9/11 memory timeline Dawn An ordinary day. A thrown stone. Ripples of disturbance from the epicenter spread in concentric circles across the still water. A tsunami awakes, gathering momentum. In my car Travelling to work, VPR reports a plane crash in lower Manhattan. On the phone Stepping out of the shower, my college roommate says she just heard a plane low and noisy over her Manhattan apartment, a place no planes should be. She does not know about a crash. On the stairs My supervisor says a second plane just crashed. Brain cells connect the dots, not an accident. I turn the radio back on. In a meeting A co-worker leans in the doorway and says the first tower is gone. I'm not sure what that means. Before lunch Another crash in Pennsylvania. Another tower disintegrated. The Pentagon is burning. I hold my breath. The stone lies in repose at the bottom of the pond, as ripples expand and accelerate outward. No cell service My builder partner is working in a remote area without cell reception. He does not know what has yet happened. At home Events defy comprehension. Consuming many sources of news, consuming the magnitude of the attacks. Not consuming food. Shuddering from loss of life. Night Sleepless. My mind is "drinking from a fire hose," while fire and emergency crews breath toxic dust, shrouding yet unquantified human remains and destruction. Shared among friends A brother walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to bring his children home from daycare. A neighbor waits days to take a train to a bus to a car to get home from New Jersey. A childhood friend escapes a nearby building to get away and steps over figures on the pavement wearing life jackets. A doctor friend drives from DC to NYC to help in the ER. There are no patients. They are dust. The rest of September The sound of quiet skies, no planes for days. Instead, birdsong. Sunny skies belying an expanse of unease. The rings of disturbance reach the edges of water, reverberating until energy dissipates. October Marriage, finally. November Plane tickets are cheap. There is an anthrax scare on the flight to Japan for our honeymoon. Eventually The water is still again. The stone under the surface remains a washed monument to the massive collective inhalation of our shared remembrance. The centerpoint calm, but undercurrents still exhale waves of enduring grief. Still, a double entendre. September 11, 2021 Remembering a day transformed from carefree to concern to chaos, and over time, to calm. Remnants are residual fears of ascending tall buildings and long flight legs over the continent. My daughter, born in 2004, is free from these fears. I wish her the freedom to look up at the sky with joy, and feel a deep connection to the world through the encircling atmosphere all people breath and share.

Michaela Stickney