Who We Were
Sarahs Bunting past.
I was 28, no greys. I had two cats, one grey. I lived, for a moment, in a loft in Toronto I was subletting from a college friend. The cats have gone. They are also here, in simple cedar boxes that contain the gravel of their bones, because when the time came, I couldn’t bring nothing home. The Little Joe box sits on my desk, near whatever I’m having to drink, because that’s where he’d be, fixing to knock it over. But he’s gone.
The college friend has gone too. A seizure when he was alone; a sharp corner whose danger wasn’t known; a grand procession to the cemetery. I was proud of that, for him. It was something — the kind of something that’s almost nothing, but something nonetheless. Something to keep him here, and every time I see a Molson tap in a pub, here he is again, clanking off the Airporter with a straining duffel for the American minors.
I was on Paxil. Lord, I hope that one’s gone; it didn’t do what it needed to, just shrank down what I felt to a hallway, mild and medium. The sobbing I did eighteen years ago today I had not done for several seasons prior. Church giggles were like a story I’d read. One thing penetrated the white-noisy middleness, the worst possible thing.
What the Paxil tried to treat is still here. I have anxiety disorder. I always have had it. It changes, that beast, it evolves: hammering visible heartbeats, waves of despair, compulsions about foods and routes and lucky broken tchotchkes taken around everywhere, agoraphobia. Terror, and the war on it, every day retaking the same ground. The enemy never tires. At last, and by accident, I found the right meds, and the spirals still happen, but now they have an end. But they wait here for me.
I used to come to Tomato Nation every day. I approved comments and made updates. I gave advice, and I wish I hadn’t given some of it. Today, a year’s gone by. In the lead graphic, my grandfather’s eyes still regard us. I miss those days sometimes, three or four apartments ago, different desks and coffee, the wind in different trees, dropping a different bag on the ground all “How was the day?” But on Tomato Nation, those days can still be now, even though they’re gone. We can still be here together, not the same way, just the same way, with our old selves.
Isn’t that the anguishing gift of life — that what’s gone can yet remain? Hilly, my uncle, Dr. Ellen’s t-shirt-cannon strings of emojis leaving her ghost signature on my Instagram, my aunt who married us…my grandma who I watched Charles and Diana get married with by phone back when that could cost a fortune (and did; sorry again, Dad), whose pen cup I’m looking at, whose gaudiest costume ring I have on today, who taught me geranium husbandry and old songs and what “favorite” could mean. What a big space to leave and still be everywhere.
People use that Faulkner line about the past sometimes like it’s a bad thing, like we can’t escape, and sometimes that’s the truth of it. Other times, it’s nice to leave a space beside me for what’s gone, for who I was and who was with me then.
And for a slice of cake with confetti frosting. Happy birthday, Don.
Tags: September 11th
AnnMargrock sums up so well why we return to this space each year.
Stay well Sarah; happy birthday Don!
I was 20, ADHD undiagnosed, autopiloting my way through university.
This place was a kind of touchstone; it still is.
Thanks for everything.
For giving me meaning, just a little, when I had none for what I witnessed.
Thanks for marking a concrete passage of time, so I could remember what year, what month, what day, when my depression got RRRRREAL BAD and just straightup ate the concept of all of that.
Now I’m 38 and happy. More awake, more aware of WTF my brain is on about. And bad mistakes? I’ve made a few! But I can learn from ’em.
Happy birthday to Don.
Thank you for all the awesome wordsmithetry, Sars. :D
You gave some good advice, too. Some of it to me, more of which I wish I’d taken. 18 years ago I was 6 weeks shy of my 28th birthday, and had a list of blogs I read most days. Blogs are almost gone now, but I come here every year to be a year older with you, and wish Don a happy birthday.
Happy birthday, Don. Wish we knew where you are and how you’re doing.
Thank you for this. This is a touchstone for me every year on this anniversary. I think of you and Don, and that there are still good people in the world.
Here we all are, again.
It takes a long time to start reading at ‘For Thou Art With Us’ and get to here. It takes a long time. It’s been a long time. It’s good to be here.
Happy birthday, Don.
Names change, people change, the Internet changes, but my comfort in reading your writing on this day I hope never will. Thank you. And, as ever, HB, D.
Eighteen years? Eighteen years.
Happy birthday, Don – and thank you, Sars.
Hi Sars. In all these years I’m not sure I’ve ever commented here but I come back every year today. I’m still here and I’m so glad you are too. Thank you.
Cheers, Don. Happy Birthday.
Sars, it’s a challenging process for me to express myself in writing. Your words so often capture the feeling of today in just the right way, and I thank you for posting each year.
Happy Birthday Don.
Happy Birthday Don. Peace to you all and see you all here next year.
18 years. I’m 42. Then, I had a failing relationship, a newborn career, no kids no cats, and very little idea of how to handle myself in the wake of an event like this. Now, I have a decade-plus long marriage, a nearly 20-year career, two kids, two cats, and still very little idea of how to handle myself in the wake of an event like this.
Thanks as always for giving us all a touchstone today. Happy Birthday, Don.
Another member of the Nation checking in. How has it been so many years? Thanks for being here.
Eighteen years?
I can’t even remember how I found Tomato Nation back in the day–I’m sure I lurked for months before posting for the first time, because that’s what I do. Test the waters, listen closely, make sure. Don’t want to ruin it. This is important.
And now I come back every year–a whole generation’s worth of years. If I’d had a baby when I read For Thou Art With Us, he’d be eighteen now and I’d be…well, Lord knows where I’d be, except we both know where I’d be today. Here.
If anybody ever asked, I’d say “I don’t know. I’ve always been here.” It’s part of my heart’s map where it doesn’t matter which coffee shop closed or how many ugly condos got built. The steps are the same.
Thank you Sarah. I’m so glad you’re here. Can’t believe it’s been so long.
Happy birthday, Don.
I’m not big on sad anniversaries (I forget the ones in my life – Mom, Dad – all the time), but this one? Can’t be forgotten, for so many reasons. And last night, I knew that I’d find this page today, to observe this anniversary the way I prefer. Quietly and privately, with your writing: resonant with not just your specific experience, but our universal experience, and with people who get that, and are here for each other in a hard world. Thanks for being the person who brings us here, and giving us this place to be.
Happy Birthday, Don.
Happy Birthday, Don.
I was a fan of Tomato Nation back then, and always will be. I came back today because I remember waiting for a post from you, 18 years ago, saying you were okay. I’m glad I checked in today because this was a beautiful post. ???
This year, and every year, we remember.
Thank you, Sarah. And happy birthday, Don.
I was trying to explain Girls Bike Club to somebody who found the cd on my shelf. Gave up. ‘Had to be there.’
And that’s it, right? We had to be here. Then, as today.
Best to you, Sars. Happy Birthday to Don.
The one thing I do consistently every year. Thank you, as always. And, as always: happy birthday, Don.
So many names I remember from back in the day. If I remembered the name I used to use, I’d use it again, but this will have to do.
Thanks for still being here Sars. And happy birthday, Don.
Thanks for being here, Sars, and for the always perfect words.
Happy Birthday, Don.
Hello, old friends. Still here, and never not coming HERE here, on this day. At this point, a *different* fat tabby is sleeping in the hand-knit cat bed I won in a Donor’s Choose event, one year…but I still have it, and it is still beloved (and bickered over). Thank you as ever, Sarah, and happy birthday, Don.
Thank you, Sars. I was in tears in the first paragraph and wiped my eyes so vigorously I apparently lost a contact. I remember being here 18 years ago, in an office blocks from the white house, and my dad, gone now, calling me to tell me he could see the smoke from the pentagon and telling me to get out, don’t wait for my supervisor, just go. And then I remember coming here and reading you and how that helped, just a little. And then every year your words helped make the world make a little more sense. So thank you, thank for all of this for all these years.
Thanks you, Sars, for these and all the words that came before and after.
Happy birthday, Don.
Hey all, nice to see the annual check in. Happy birthday, Don.
We have all changed so much, we are not who we were and the world is not what it was, but I come here every year to be reminded that small gestures matter. People who only grace our lives for a moment can leave a lasting mark, and we can do the same for others. Happy birthday, Don.
Ever year, Sars, since *that* year. This one is different, though. *This* year, my husband took his life, in March, and I haven’t watched TV since. But, I still had to come here.
“What a big space to leave and still be everywhere.”
I felt that in my bones, Sars, thank you.
Happy birthday, Don.
Every year. Always.
Beanie, I’m so sorry.
Every year. Thank you Sarah. Happy Birthday, Don
Every year. I stop in here and read all of the columns from this day, then I watch the reading of the names. How many different people have we all been in the last 18 years?
Thank you, Sars.
Happy Birthday, Don.
First stop every year. Still worth keeping this blog even if you only post the one essay every year.
Happy birthday, Don.
“Thank you” doesn’t cover it for me, either, but it will have to serve. I’ve missed your voice. Thank you for, among so much else over the years, keeping this space for us all to gather. I’m glad we can all be here together again.
Be well, friends of the ‘Nation. Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you Sars, and Happy Birthday Don.
Thank you, Sarah. Happy Birthday, Don.
I was 29 and had been married for less than two months. Now I’m 47 and my husband left me for another woman four months ago. From a grief felt around the world to a devastation only I feel – I didn’t know who I was then, and I really, really don’t know now.
But whomever I am, I come here every year. Thank you, Sars.
And happy birthday, Don.
Love to you all.
You answered my question about recovering from a car crash maybe a year before 9/11, and so I was already a very avid reader by that time. I still come back every year. It does my heart such good, always, to see something. To remember the way it ached.
I had been out so late the night before, I had had a beer I was two years too young to drink, and I had driven back home so carefully, with “Psycho Killer” on the stereo. It would be the last song I heard in the Old Times.
It was my mom who told me what was happening that morning. I was terrified she somehow knew what I had been up to the night before. “Planes are going down everywhere,” she said. Now it’s five years since mid-September took her, too.
All this is to say, thank you for tending this place, this little altar we all return to, every year now only a little less like the Old Times than the one before.
This is the only website I want to read on this day. I was 21, then. Not a teacher yet. Not finished with college yet.
Now I teach kids who were born to a post-9/11 world and THAT is something I have trouble fathoming.
Happy birthday, Don.
Happy birthday, Don. Thank you, Sars.
Thank you, Sars, and Happy Birthday Don. I’ve been a part of the community of readers here dating back a long long while – well before 9/11, and faithfully return on this anniversary because your writing resonates in a much more meaningful way each September than anything else I’ve found.
I was in grad school in Philly on 9/11 and remember walking into my office and hearing the news and spending the rest of the day (classes canceled) in a bar with my officemates trying to process things. I am such a different person now than I was then, but somehow I think I still follow many of the TWOP writers in so many of the amazing places you’ve ended up. Thank you for everything all these years.
And just a quick virtual hug to Double Nerd Score. Mid-September took my mother, too – 2005. The days can be very stunningly beautiful outside but it’s a hard time of year.
Years ago, I won some little plastic animals in a Donors Choose contest (one of the prizes was, basically, “Sarah buys something random at the dollar store). I still keep them on my coffee table. They remind me of all the fun discussions we’ve had on this site, and the moments we’ve reached out to others without even knowing each other.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you, Sarah. Happy Birthday, Don. I was 31 and just starting to figure out my life. Much love to you and all.
Thank you again.
They may be gone, but they’re still here in various little ways.
Happy birthday, Don.
I come here once in awhile just to reread some of your posts and of course, I love the ones about the cats.
Thanks Sarah. Happy Birthday Don!
My only true pilgrimage for 9/11 is Tomato Nation and thinking of you (and Don.) Any time I get dusty feet in my flip flops, there you are.
Thank you for this piece, and all the rest.
North NJ girl here, was then. I re-read your 9/11 post every year, to know that I still remember to.
Happy Birthday Don. And thank you Sarah.
Thank you, Sarah.
I do miss your writing on here, but I also totally understand the different apartments, different trees, different life places thing. I am so glad you do stop by every year for this, it really does mean a lot to me, a random internet stranger.
Oh, I also still have the Tomato Nation magnets on my fridge that I got so many years ago when you told me to just ditch that loser boy, already. Thanks for that kick in the pants too.
Happy Birthday, Don. I hope you are well.
Never commented before, but I come here every year. Thank you for this piece, for the original, and for every year since. And happy birthday Don.
I was 31 and in the Happiest Place on Earth with my newly-minted fiancé. And as I listened to the news, you, my Mediarama amiga, were very much on my mind.
Happy birthday, Don. And thank you, Sars, for holding space with us.