12/20/2001


Remember my parents, living on the same postal route as the source of most of the anthrax mailings? This morning my dad got a check in the mail; it was in a plastic bag, because it had apparently been mangled in a postal machine or some such. My mom opened the bag--and poof, there was a tiny little puff of white dust. A second later, still standing in the same position, seeing nothing where the puff had been, she tasted something bitter on her tongue.

So, they called it in. There were three fire engines in the street outside (this is a pretty quiet little residential street) and cops in yellow suits came into the house, did tests, reassured my folks that anthrax doesn't have a taste, and that the powder was probably paper fibers and envelope glue. They swapped their own scare stories, prescribed showers and a good housecleaning, asked them to contact a family doctor if they wished, rather than the ER, and admonished them to call again if anything further happened. The neighbors gawked. My parents went back to their day as well as possible.

There is, of course, no reason to suppose my dad's former employer is connected with any terrorist mailings. But a white puff is a white puff, and in these days there is no choice but to take it just that seriously.


Meanwhile, it's Christmas, and I've spent the last two weeks wrapping presents at work--donations for the kids who lost parents in the company's WTC office. (Last night, when I finally wrapped a few for my own family, my hands were surer and swifter in that task than ever in my life.) The one time I dared to peek at the name tag on a present--for most of the process they were coded--I saw a name I recognized instantly, the young son of a particular dead man whose face and name have kept cropping up on my desk again and again since the attack. It's hard to wrap toys for days on end without a certain holiday atmosphere arising in the office, but that feeling has been set against the underlying knowledge of what this will be for all of these families--the first Christmas in a household shattered by murder. Fresh murder, still unsettled and bewildering.


Meanwhile the daft pageant of American mixed reaction carries on: the tree in Rockefeller Center is entirely decked out in flag colors, meaning who knows what but obediently in keeping with the sudden mandate for vaguely patriotic displays. Every company visible to the public has made its bid to seem appropriately red-blooded, from Osh Kosh to Dunkin' Donuts, in what has become the most dully undifferentiated fashion imperative since black.

And somewhere in the back of my mind I keep wondering, as I imagine others do, whether some terrorist cell somewhere thinks hitting us on our big holiday would be the proper way to hurt us--if only in punishment for bombing Muslims throughout Ramadan.


I'm not trying to be a downer here. I hope you have a happy Christmas, as I plan to myself, bouncing from household to household along the Eastern seaboard. I've been listening to Christmas music for weeks, we put up a tree, had a party complete with Rebecca's family eggnog, and I'm about done with my shopping, in which I'm pleased to have held to a wickedly frugal standard while scoring some well-placed gifts, in some cases induplicably brilliant. It's the holidays and I want to enjoy them. I'm only setting these things down, first because I want to keep at least a partial chronicle of these days for future reference, and second because, honestly, it's a little weird to spend half your day imagining your mother inhaling anthrax.

This is the world we live in. And we take our Christmas in this world as well.



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