I wrote this thinking I was following parameters for a three-minute, 600 word NPR entry. I read it over and realized something different came out. So I post it here. I suspect we all have such formative experiences. I realize how much my understanding of this childhood event has been re-shaped and re-formed as I have grown as a parent. I imagine 9-11 will continue to have a similar resounding impact on parents and children alike, in different ways.
She grew up going north to the cabin on the lake every summer. It is what everyone did in Minnesota in the 1960*s. Of course everyone went to a different cabin on a different lake and headed north on different roads. Still. there was comfort doing what everyone else did, heading north from the Cities, to spend part of the summer at the cabin on the lake. It was familiar territory.
At the cabin on the lake her father built an underground fallout shelter with double-thick concrete walls and ceiling, double the thickness of any Civil Defense fallout shelter plans. He built it with three extra turns in the entrance to be three times as safe. Her father researched wind patterns at the lake and determined the weather at the cabin on the lake was always different from Fargo or Duluth. The cabin on the lake, north of the Cities, in the woods, was certified safe. He planted the top of the shelter with clover so it was indistinguishable from the cockpit of stray enemy aircraft as anything other than a clover field in the middle of the woods. The shelter held two weeks worth of supplies for two adults, three children, and the two family dogs. It had water and canned food, a porta-potty and double thick walls. It had a new unwrapped boxed game of Scrabble.
When she thought of it later, as a teenager, she realized no one else had a dad who had built a fallout shelter from scratch in the north woods with double thick concrete walls and ceiling, and a clover field on top. Later she also remembered the dog food and Scrabble.
That year was different from other years. It was long past summer, almost Halloween. She had her cat costume ready to wear. She had even braided the tail from dyed gray sheets. The ears were grey terrycloth. She was seven, her brother ten, her sister eleven. That year she and her brother and sister packed up their costumes as they were told. The family left the city and drove north as it was getting dark. Once at the cabin they listened to the radio and played endless games of mahjongg. The next day was Halloween. After supper, she and her brother and sister dressed in their costumes, trick-or-treated from the front door of the cabin to the back door and around to the front door again. Her cat tail dragged in the dirt. Her parents changed clothes in between. They answered each door and pretended to be different neighbors, admiring the costumes in different ways each time. She never knew they could act. Her mother was particularly good at being the neighbor lady across the street. The fallout shelter hunkered down the hill from the cabin, in the dark. She listened to the radio that night with everyone else. Her father kept changing the dial. She did not know what they were listening for, but she knew it was important that they listened. She and her brother and sister sat on the cabin floor and sorted the candy they had collected.
The next morning they drove home south to the City, and unpacked the car. Her father returned to work in the Foshay Tower. Her mother cleaned the kitchen. The next morning she walked to school with her brother and her sister.
Nothing looked different.
Inside she knew somewhere, somehow, there was shelter. It was not north and it was not made of concrete.
Inside somewhere, many years later, she realized her parents were somehow less than they seemed.
Inside somewhere, really only recently, she realized her parents were more: much much more.
