Saturday, September 11, 2021

Need Another Good Cry?

The Broadway musical Come from Away is on Apple TV. 

I've had the good fortune to have seen this three times on stage -- once in Seattle before it went to New York, on Broadway and then again in Seattle.

I laughed. I cried. It was better than Cats.

Seriously. This is an amazing show.

It takes place in Newfoundland, Canada on September 11, 2001 when 200 international flights were diverted and ordered to land in the tiny town of Gander. Gander used to be a refueling spot for transatlantic flights before the planes could carry enough fuel to get across the ocean. The story is what happened to the town and the people that landed there during a week of deep uncertainty and fear.

My next door neighbors in Ravenna were coming home from Paris when their plane landed in Gander on 9/11. They were two of seven thousand people people who "came from away."

Where was I when I heard of the first plane crash? I was in St. Louis, Missouri. Claire-Adele was just a year old. I was watching the news, waiting for the weather forecast for the day. I called my mom when the second plane hit. In the afternoon, I had to turn off the news so I took Claire-Adele to the zoo with my friend Kari and her son Jackson. It was so quiet. No planes overhead. No cars in the street. No one at the zoo.

I am not sure how to close this. "Happy 9/11" seems horribly and terribly wrong.

Perhaps, "Remember."

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