I’m not sure if I believe in parallel universes, but if they do exist, there was a portal to one in my garage ten years ago. But I couldn’t bring myself to look into it.
Ten years ago we still had our daily newspaper
subscription. We’d had one for years, but
by 2001, we really weren’t reading the paper much any more. We liked our big Sunday paper with the comics
and all the ads and coupons, but often we just didn’t get around to reading the
weekday issues. And lets face it, if you
haven’t read yesterday’s paper by the time today’s paper arrives, it’s probably
not going to happen. And it might not
happen with today’s, either. Instant
news on the internet was rapidly rendering printed news obsolete. As the pile of old newspapers, too many
unopened and unread, grew each month, I was ready to cancel our
subscription and save a few trees. Jerry still wanted to know
it was there for him when he wanted to read it, however seldom. So, we had our newspaper delivered every day.
That was the state of affairs on a sparklingly beautiful September
morning ten years ago. It was about 6:45
AM Pacific time, and I was getting ready to take my son to school. His zero-period class would start at
7:00. On my way out to the car, I
picked up the newspaper that had been tossed onto the driveway just an hour or
so before. I tossed it into the garage
and got in the car while I waited for my son.
If you know anything about teenage boys and early mornings,
you know that they are not a good match.
Michael had it timed so that he stayed in bed until the very last
moment, allowing himself just enough time to get up, dressed, eat something and
get himself out the door so I could get him to school just as the bell was
ringing. I did my part by being ready in
the car to take him there. So on this
particular morning, as I was sitting in my car in my driveway, waiting for
Michael to come out, I turned on the radio, (it was NPR,) and they were reporting
live about some kind of big breaking news.
As I listened, it sounded almost frantic as the reporters relayed what
was happening. A plane had crashed into
the World Trade Center? For a moment, I thought it might be like
H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: eerily
realistic, but in the end, just a story.
But no, this was real.
Michael got into the car, still sleepy and grumpy and not
caring much about what was on the radio.
I remember thinking how serious it sounded and I asked him if he thought
he should stay home. He said he didn’t
know, but he might as well go to school.
I dropped him off and came back home, the gravity of what was happening
in New York
beginning to sink in with every passing minute that I listned to the radio.
I had called home to Brice and told him to turn on the
TV. I don’t think we turned it off for
the next 2 or 3 days. I won't try to describe the feelings. I think everybody old enough to understand went through their own shock, grief, anger, and whatever else. As the days and weeks passed and we slowly resumed our normal lives, it became clear that that "normal" felt different now. Our world had changed.
Days later, still adjusting to this new reality, I came upon
the portal to another universe. It was
that newspaper from Tuesday, September 11, still unopened in the garage. I knew that inside it contained news, sports, weather, advertisements. But I also knew that it was printed in a universe that didn’t
have four hijacked planes in a diabolically choreographed plan that killed
thousands of people and forever altered the mindset of millions more. I never did open it, but I held onto that newspaper for
several months, the way I would keep a seashell or a dried flower. It held a memory of something that might have
been, and maybe still is, somewhere in time and space.
As I stated in a very old post:
