I once encouraged the members of a Sunday School class to map the significant events that shaped their lives. Everyone has those moments that stand out in memory. Some are personal; the immense joy of marriage or the birth of a child, the intense grief at the loss of a parent or spouse. Others are shared across a generation; the beginning of the Civil War, Black Tuesday, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
My generation’s moment came on a beautiful Tuesday morning. I was home, finishing an English paper for my evening college class, when I decided to give my Dad a quick call. He told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and suggested I turn on the television. I was watching the coverage from New York when the screen suddenly split and the Pentagon, smoke pouring from one side, snapped into view. I will never forget that instant in time when I realized the very icon of our national defense was under attack.
Three days later, the initial shock and apprehension about the nation’s safety gave way to a new concern. Less than a month earlier, my husband and I had signed a second mortgage on our home to start his dream business, a scuba shop. He ran the business part-time, in the evenings, but planned to leave his day job at the beginning of the new year to go into diving full time. I wondered now what we had gotten ourselves into, and whether a new business could survive the uncertainty of those days.
My husband and I attended a Civil War re-enactment a few weeks ago. I was temporarily taken back in time by the words of President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. I imagined myself in the audience at Gettysburg, where so many lives were lost, as the President spoke ten of the most famous sentences in American history. I envisioned Ulysses S. Grant on a street corner in St. Louis, just four years before his appointment as Commander of the Union Forces, a poor farmer selling firewood.
These were ordinary men who are remembered for their contributions to an extraordinary time. Scores of men and women who went about their normal routine that bright morning in 2001 contributed extraordinarily, and many paid the ultimate price. Fifteen years later, the newest high school freshmen learn of 9-11 and the Civil War from history books.
The one thing certain in life is uncertainty. One event can change everything. Wanting to know what lies ahead is human nature, but we tend to live better without such knowledge. Fear is a great thief, and every day men and women are robbed of what they might achieve by worry about how they might fail. In the most important moments, we humans tend to rise to the occasion, to step up and do what is necessary. In the smaller, mundane moments of life, we wonder and ponder and question whether we should or shouldn’t do this or that.
With that, I welcome you to lifeatroomtemperature.com, which represents the next step in my progression as a writer. How far this path will take me remains to be seen, but I hope you will walk along with me on the journey.
Copyright 2016 Sherry Hathaway all rights reserved.