Dean’s World, Kesher Talk, Winds of Change, Alarming News, /PJ Media and many other sites on my blogroll discuss 9/11.

Here, Dean says his pain is gone but his resolve is still there. Others, including Steven Den Beste, describe a combination of rage, resolve and a need to defend loved ones. Pain and resolve often seem to be tied up with rage.

My first reaction to 9/11 was shock. The second, to call everyone I knew who could have been near the towers to see if they were ok. They were. Then, there was the need to help the many people who (I assumed) would be injured. I was hundreds of miles away from New York City then, living in Cape May. Like many people, I called the Red Cross offering to give blood. I couldn’t donate the blood because I’d spent years in Europe – they were afraid I could be one of those mad cow virus sufferers – but so much blood was donated, there was an oversupply.

In those days I thought New York and probably all of America would be vulnerable to more terrorist attacks, so I went to the library and took out books about the London Blitz. Rudy Giuliani’s speeches, the press described the heroism and comradarie of the NYFD, the police, and the New Yorkers who volunteered to help at the WTC site. Like the brave Brits of WWII, I decided we needed to join hands, unite and have a stiff upper lip. We needed to be generous, to join together, to keep rage from dividing us in this time of need.

I suppressed any rage I felt the usual way, by being busy. I turned housecleaning into a near-obsession, which my kids will note, is very unusual. I dusted the ceiling fans and cleaned under the refrigerator. Despite agnosticism, I started going to church, bringing batches of cookies and food for after service meals and potlucks. I donated to every 9/11 fund that came my way, and made a special point of eating at Muslim-run restaurants, fearing that the community would shun them. In fact, those restaurants were more crowded than ever.

I had been working on a novel about the rise and fall of a mobster-funded dot-com, with one last chapter to go. After 9/11, it seemed very dated. Between fan-cleaning and baking to much, I tried to revise it, to make some changes to the characters. They were self-centered, sex-obsessed and not very caring or generous. In my new helpful mode, I decided to rewrite it.

I softened the attitude of one character, turning him from a randy, knife-wielding mobster to a well-meaning fireman-in-training who got caught up with a bad crowd of knife-weilding mobsters. In the middle of making a potluck salad one morning after the kids left for school, I thought about a scene from the book, where a thug had to throw a knife. I wondered – how do you throw a knife?

I took the paring knife I was using and flipped it at our ‘Things to do’ bulletin board. It bounced back and cut my arm.

Reality proved that I wasn’t visualizing the scene very accyrately. I picked the knife up again, wrapped my arm with a dish towel and sort of aimed it at the bulletin board, the way you’d throw a dart. It didn’t bounce back this time, but it barely stuck. Weak throw.

I tried again, and again, using more strength until the knife cut through the bulletin board. I pulled the board away from the wall, so as not to damage it, and got a bigger knife. I practiced for strength and accuracy for a long time, reveled in the loud ‘thunks’ that resulted from a good hit, and didn’t stop until I couldn’t raise my arm anymore.

The bulletin board was shot and there was still blood on the floor. I had to clean that up and get a new board before the kids came home.

I also had to admit that I was angry, and the usual methods weren’t going to make it go away. In some situations, grief and the urge to help are caught up inexorably with rage and the urge to defend. We tried to separate them for a while, but we couldn’t. Maybe that’s just the way we’re wired.

..and I’m a better dart player now.