It just occurred to me that this whole month, September of 2011, is 9/11. They may be talking about this all over the place, but I haven’t yet heard that mentioned.. The whole 9/11 shock 10 years later, signified for a full month with these numbers.

September 11, 2011, I filed for divorce. When I made that appointment I had no idea what the day would bring. When the day came I called into the attorney’s office to ask if I should still come. They said, “Come on!” Admitting that no one knew what in the world was going on or if we should conduct business as usual, but still they weren’t telling people not to come. Everyone there was bouncing off of walls. speaking in tongues of some kind. We did finally fill out some papers that initiated divorce. My ex had declared the desire for divorce a year before that but nothing had been done in all of that time, and when I finally realized it was up to me to just get it done, that’s the day I chose to make an appointment, unbeknownst. It has always felt like something loaded with meaning for me personally.

Now it is September of 2011. In this one month my baby girl, Josi Ward, turning 30 in November, somehow made her own 9/11 fall out month without completely consciously planning it. She scheduled the writing exams for the completion of her course work in Architectural History at Cornell University to be due just days before she was to leave for her wedding. HER WEDDING. She got them done and crawled down to NC and put on her most brilliant and joyous face to engage in the festivities, with only a few anxiety attacks around the edges that Melinda, her new sister-in-law and I, her mother, helped her through with our own special ways of loving encouragement.  Wedding, wedding, wedding, awesome blow out of experince and emotion, miraculous and hilarious thing after miraculous and extraordiary thing – and then she’s back, surreally in Ithaca three days later to face her ORAL exams to complete the course work for her doctorate.

9/11. 9/11. 9/11. This ambitiously creatively fiercely fearlessly brave creature scheduled written exams one week, the wedding 3 states away the next week, a magnificent and expansive affair, and oral exams the week after. WHO DOES THAT?

My Josi. This child of 9/11. It must be genetic. The day her broken mother finally crawled to the attorney’s office to admit defeat and signed some papers the whole world was coming undone anyway. So this girl rises up 10 years later and takes it all on in one month.

This is a microcosm in one tiny family of the 9/11 thing. What is yours? What was coming undone then that is being revisited now?

And P.S. if you pray, pray for Josi Ann Ward  this coming Wednesday 9/28 from 9 to 11 a.m specifically.  Her brave genuis deserves our help to stoke the fire inside her to burn bright, to feed her instinct and intellect in great clear surges of power. The world is at your feet lovely Josi.

9/11. My village got me through it then. We’ll catch your back now.You get the next one. We all need help identifying these crises with each other. And being togtether we have it covered. It takes the village. There is no greater power. We’re with you Josi. 9/11 taught us a lot.