Ron arrived back home on Wednesday. Extremely tired from working nights and not sleeping much days, so the first order of business was catching up on some sleep. We’re still talking here and there about what happened while he was there. He did do some void searches and he found a staircase in one area but no victims were there.
One of his comments was that life in general is returning to normal in the city. He said by the end of the week someone in fire/rescue garb was less likely to get stopped on the street by others. He mentioned that he went back to “his” pub, Mulligans, to say goodbye and thanks and that it had given him a little normalcy to have a “regular” place to go for meals.
I showed him some of the 911 quilt progress online and then the quilt itself. At dinner last night he asked me what the little triangles meant. I said – what do YOU think they mean? No, he said, I asked you first! So I explained what I thought the various design bits came from – the sudden break in my reality after hearing the news – the deep void of grief at first and then the lesser early grief, fading into a grief-tinted period. To me the little triangular bits might represent the idea that even during grief, normal life pops up to show you that life goes on – you laugh, you see a pretty flower or sunset, you experience love.
He said – wow, totally different. His take – Normal day on the left, and then the bombing in the center and all the smoke, dust and ash on the right. To him the triangular bits represent all the things which fell from the building including people and steel.
I guess that’s a success! – when you can look at a piece of art and see something in it based on what’s in your head. It might not be exactly what the artist was thinking but it made you think about something and interpret it using the artist’s symbols and work.
