That thing that sometimes happens when I just let some thoughts show up on the page

Hi there.

I think this might be the first ever Malcolm sisters together photo... no, wait, there was the hungover in our pajamas photo back in July, so this isn't really the first photo of us together on this blog. It's too bad the blog doesn't have a photo album feature so that those of you who find the text a bit slow can just click on pretty pictures.

I was browsing through photos for the blog today, and kept coming back to anything that was taken in NY of course. One thing I always say about 9/11 is that I knew my sister who lives in NY was okay, because the Towers were hit just after 9, and I wasn't really sure she even got out of bed that early. It's a joke, but seriously, it was sort-of nice to think that you were probably just leaving the apartment, even though it makes me sad to think of you and Eugene looking down those long avenues to where all the smoke was coming from, and to think about the police barricades that blocked off lower Manhattan, stopping just 2 blocks from where we used to live, with you on the inside and so many of the firefighters from the station we walked by every day never making it back up there again.

This photo was from the NY visit with Elvis. I guess it was spring of 2004. Not a visit I remember with a lot of fondness, not, of course because you weren't great company, Allison, but it certainly wasn't my finest moment, nor the finest moment of my traveling companion. I'm not sure I had ever stomped up to a bar to flip my boyfriend off before. I know I haven't done it since, and I'm pretty damn sure I won't be doing it again.

But since it's just you and me here, I have to say, if he didn't deserve it then, he sure did later. The problem with him though, was that 15 minutes later, he was in a taxi eating a falafel that was so spicy it was making him cry, and whine like a baby, which was pretty funny considering how he looked in those days, and when I said "Why don't you stop eating it then?", he said "I'm not going to let this falafel lick me!" and we both laughed, and one of our favorite recurring jokes was born.

Laughter through tears, my favorite emotion - isn't that what you always say, Mom?

Except, of course, that I prefer to cry because I'm laughing so hard, not laugh in spite of crying so hard. I bet mom also prefers the laughing too. Unless she's at a movie. She likes those tear-jerkers. Or used to.

What does all of this have to do with 9/11? Well.

Well.

Just grief is all. Life is sort-of full of unresolved grief, isn't it? Thinks that there is no fix for, that we don't have much choice but to feel sad about. 5 years ago seems so long ago, and just yesterday at the same time.

I'm glad that a lot has happened in the last 5 years. At the same time, in some ways, I'm still orbiting around the same places. When I heard about the Twin Towers falling, I was standing in Caffe Lladro, at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill, on my way to work at a biotech company, in HR.

This morning found me standing in Caffe Fiorre, on top of Queen Anne, on my way to work at a different biotech company, still in HR. The coffee shop is nicer, the coffee is better, if more expensive, and as I've said here before, the baristas are my favorite baristas ever. I think the biotech company is more promising too.

So, those things are sort-of the same, but back in 2001, I was living in the house I owned in Ballard with Karl, and that seems like a very long time and a different life ago. I find it a little comforting that it was so close in time - I like the idea that 5 years down the road might make certain aspects of this time seem so far away, while keeping lots of the good things the same.

Anyway, the grief is still there. I hear the 9/11 stuff, and as much as what it all turned into irks me, it still makes me cry, I think about the city I lived in, the one that still keeps you, and it is easy to tear up. I was there the first time the towers were bombed, probably more than 10 years ago, and I remember the people streaming out of the buildings with their mouths and noses balck with soot from breathing the air in a building that was on fire. What I thought of in 2001 was all those people not coming out. That's all, just not coming out.

There isn't a fix for that kind of grief. There isn't a fix for losing someone you love, no matter what you lose them too, whether it's a plane through a building, or alcoholism, or one of the diseases these biotech companies are trying to cure, or just plain old incompatibility.

I don't like that part of living. I don't like it, but what I know 5 years later is that, like it or not, I can live with it. And there's something to be said for that, and for the fact that even after several of those unresolvable losses, on any given day, I am usually just as happy getting up in the morning and starting the day with a visit to a Seattle coffee shop as I was on any given day 5 years ago. And if 5 years down the road, I can still say something like what I'm saying today, that's good enough for me.

Love you Ali, and I'm glad you're here.