The summer of 2001 I paid for a half share of a beach house in Amagansett, New York, with about six other people.
It was more than I could afford. And I worried I wouldn?t fit in. I?m not the club type and couldn?t (can?t) afford couture and regular full-body waxes like the women I envisioned who summered in the Hamptons.
It turns out most women there didn?t fit that description.
But it still felt decadent.
Our house sat a half mile from the beach and friends across the street had a sheltered pool, great for windy days. We held regular croquet tournaments and grilled out.
It felt good to be careless.
I didn?t know what I wanted to do with my life and that summer it didn?t matter.
And then it did.
I did not lose family or friends on September 11, unlike so many in New York. And I did not fear leaving my apartment, like some friends after the attacks. Nor did I lie awake at night afraid to die like others. Ecclesiastes says a time and a place exists for everything. I never had worried about my time and wasn?t going to start, even as I watched and then joined thousands of people, many covered in ash, stream uptown from lower Manhattan and cross bridges to the Burroughs on foot.
But that carelessness that I had so treasured turned morally abhorrent to me in the weeks after witnessing the second plane crash from my office.
Part of the change started immediately. I remember so clearly a woman newscaster breathlessly asking, “Could this be a coincidence?” after that second plane hit. “Are you an idiot?” I yelled at the TV. “We?re under attack!”
A friend called a few minutes later to say that everything just changed. “Say goodbye to our civil liberties,” he said.
And thousands of lives. This mattered.
As the numbness wore off, I started to feel like a parasite, freeloading off of people who were the best at what they chose to do and made the city so stimulating as a result.
Instead of deliberately detouring up 85th between Third and Lexington avenues to pass the fire station each morning en route to the subway to work, I avoided it.
It seemed that nearly half the members of the station died in the attack ? the same smiling, handsomeand cajoling men who winked at women each morning. I would joke back, never thinking until later that their diversion was my life. I couldn?t stomach walking by the letters and flowers and photos set out on easels for passerby to see.
They and the rest of the nearly 3,000 people who died from the plane attacks ? many of whose loved ones posted flyers with their faces on the walls of subway stations ? became for me mirrors of my complacency. So did the plumes of smoke emanating from the wreckage days after the attacks.
Even if I had wanted to remain in a cocoon, I couldn?t.
Within a month I was laid off of my job. Losing it made me want to set right all the things in my life. So I broke up with my boyfriend, whom I knew I would never love, and applied to journalism school, something I had contemplated for five years.
People say in vino veritas. But you can achieve the same effect from collecting unemployment insurance.
It?s humbling.
So is attending graduate school when you?re pushing 30 and 95 percent of your classmates can barely make it into a bar. I felt old and behind in life. But five years from the attacks I feel so fortunate to have found and to be able to pursue journalism, the closest thing to a calling I?ve ever experienced. It means moving and working ? a lot. It disrupts relationships.
But most days it brings me great satisfaction to report the news, to share and learn a little bit more about the human condition. Doing so faithfully makes me feel that the thousands who died five years ago did not do so totally in vain.
Marta Hummel is associate editorial page editor of The Baltimore Examiner. She can be reached at [email protected].
