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Last official day of lifeguard work September 11, 2001 - Fate Faries - book version
This entry was posted on 1/17/2012 1:45 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
A 45 year old college junior, one fall morning in 2001, I was on my way to the University of Whitewater - Wisconsin. I was in my second semester there after transferring in from Madison Area Technical College. My mother had died of cancer in March of that year. It was an exhausting ordeal. I had put my job and college on hold for a semester to care for her. I had some medical training. All that remained from the battle to help Mom was her house in Janesville and her old car. I would stop by to check on the place on my way to UW-Whitewater on the commute from Green County.
On that particular morning, I was bringing an ancient house cat of mine over to the empty rambling house to let him live out his life until we decided what to do with the place. He would join Sam the little barn tiger who had already made himself at home there. We were glad we saved the humble estate through the medical ordeal, (many people lose their homes at the end of life) but because she was so sick for so long, the house had fallen into a bit of a shambles. We were now the owners of what other people who did not look at it close, might think was a blessing, but was in reality an expensive and falling apart house to maintain.
Anyway, I decided to put some life back into the place and brought over a couple of cats from our farmette to sit in the window as they will do. An old car in the driveway and a cat in the sunny picture window made the place look at least a bit lived in. I was there every day anyway; the surrogate security guard felines would be easy to care for.
Sidney, the now elderly "odd-yellow" (Mom's description) fuzzy Tom with the bent ear, would routinely get car sick when transported. The radio seemed to exacerbate his agony. So, I rode to Janesville in silence with Sidney in his usual state of travel distress.
Taking the opportunity during the silent ride to make a couple calls, I dialed up "The Y." Having had nine pool supervisors in five years at the YMCA, I thought it best to give a call and remind them that this particular day would be the first day I would no longer be working for them. From experience, I imagined someone wondering why I had not shown up. The 40 mile daily travel to Whitewater was just too grinding. There was no room to put another 40 mile commute to Madison to work at "The Y" as well. On a side note, there was a couple supervisors I had never even met. I took the early shifts and I was long gone by the time they came to work at nine-ish. That is why I thought it best to remind someone I was actually done working for them.
I got a hold of boss du jour and reminded her I would no longer be under her employ. There was a pause. "I remember," she said sadly. It sounded like she was crying. She said she wished I had given her more notice, but bid me good luck in a distressed weak sounding voice.
"Damn," I thought. I never bummed someone out so much before because I quit. I had only met the woman once."
When I pulled into town, it was eerily quiet. Something was fishy. On any given Tuesday, Janesville being the County Seat, would normally be bustling. I pulled into Mom's driveway and the street looked like a ghost town. One odd lawn mower ran off in the distance; the neighborhood was usually alive early in the a.m. with the retired crowd I lived amongst doing their daily minutia yard care.
I shoved Sidney into his new dwelling and paused to look back out to the street. It was like something out of those movies where everyone has died except one poor schlep. I kept Mom's old radio that sat on her kitchen counter turned in all the time. It served as a dandy burglar deterrent. I had never changed the dial she always had set at, "News, sports, and talk, 720 (AM) WGN," out of Chicago. It was the same station her own mother had listened to. Grandma grew up in Chicago. But this morning the usual distinctive Chicago voice was not on-air. There was a plethora of other voices prattling out of the old radio.
One rather distressed unfamiliar voice coming over the air waves said something to the effect, "They are gone...both towers are gone...this is awful...all air traffic is grounded...there is some kind of attack."
An odd feeling passed over me as the blood rushed to my head. I looked at Sidney now inspecting the kitchen counter of his new digs.
I had this uneasy feeling even with only that small bit of information that our lives had just changed for the rest of my lifetime at least. On the way to Whitewater when my thoughts got back to my daily toils it dawned on me. It wasn't me that had upset my boss. She must have been watching the television in the YMCA office.
It was September 11, 2001.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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