November 29, 2003

Hello, again,

This is the long-promised letter about the fortieth anniversary of the death of JFK. Maybe you’d prefer that I skip this one; politics and what must seem ancient American history may have little relevance for you. But this was the 9/11 of my generation, an event that smashed our lives every bit as much as did Pearl Harbor or that awful September day two years ago. So please indulge me as I write a little bit (as if I can ever write “a little bit”) about what really is—all clichés aside—my earliest complete memory.

I was six years old and in first grade when Kennedy was shot. That fact makes me feel old—that I have such a complete and specific memory that is now four decades old—but I guess there are some things that just affect us so greatly that we can never quite escape them. I’ve said that 9/11 is like that: I can’t even bring myself to look at the photos, and I’ve never been able to sit and actually try to compose anything that focuses on that day; it forces my mind back into that catatonic state in which I sat, unbelieving, listening to my radio in my classroom, as classes wandered in, sat and listened with me in silence, and then, without a word uttered, got up and left. I was broken by it, I think, broken by the sheer magnitude of it and the certainty that the world as I had so long known it had simply ceased to exist.

I had not known the world long in 1963, but the same emotions were at play. Although I can not say that I understood the enormity of what happened on November 22 that year, I knew it was huge and powerful, I could see the torment that it brought to the eyes of grownups everywhere, and I knew it would affect me for a very long time. Of course, I could not at that time know of the conspiracy theories that would so preoccupy the nation, nor the more tangential ramifications that followed. These effects were both positive (like Johnson’s forcing Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill down congress’s throats in 964 as a memorial to the slain leader) and negative (like the escalation of the war in Viet Nam that Kennedy would likely have withdrawn from, which led to the violent protests and riots of the late 60’s, the social and sexual revolutions that accompanied those upheavals, the ascension of Richard Nixon into the White House—and, of course, Watergate, the determination of pretty much every President that followed Kennedy, which also helped to feed the anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and led even to 9/11 itself; I do not think that is going too far). It was a watershed event in American history that was probably responsible for events as dichotomous as the assassination of Martin Luther King (which may never have taken place in a world not already rocked by assassination) and the astounding popularity of the Beatles (whose enormous talent was certainly aided by the fact that this country desperately needed, in the winter of 1963/64, some new distraction to revitalize the nation).

As I said, I did not know any of this at the tender age of six. What I did know was that my family, my teachers and my world had been shocked in some traumatic way. I was a precocious reader (before I was 4) and thus read the newspapers all that weekend. I remember the special late afternoon edition on November 22 of what was already an afternoon paper with its headlines declaring that Kennedy had been killed. I still have the papers from the following days in which the assassination was dissected and analyzed by the pundits of the time and in which the stunning event’s emotional burden is clearly unfolded. I read them that weekend, certainly without any clear comprehension of what they said. And I watched the black and white TV with my mother as Jack Ruby shot Oswald, as the newscasters explored what had happened, and as the funeral quieted the nation on that Sunday with its long, sad procession to Arlington National Cemetery.

It was a moment when, though I could not understand this exactly, I knew that the world had changed. And it has stayed indelibly with me ever since. About 15 years ago, writing in a journal in class, I found myself staring at the speaker on the wall, a speaker not terribly unlike the one through which I had heard the devastating news in 1963. And I started writing a poem, one that I finished over the next several days and have revised a few times since.

I will close this letter with that poem, which reflects, as closely as possible, the memory I have of the most horrible day I thought I would ever have to live through. I wish it had stayed so, and I fear, as I suppose we all do, that this uncertain and unstable world will have more such days in store for all of us.

Ms K

Eternal Tears

The crackle of a classroom speaker.

Dozens of small voices, stilled

by the sudden intrusion,

stop at once.

A silence.

No movement in the room but

the rhythmic metronome of the teacher's ruler

swinging back and forth in her craggy hands.

The crackle sounds once more,

and our faces turn in unison,

in anticipation,

towards its source.

A small, broken voice--

recognizable but not normal,

not the rich, strong voice usually carried into the room that way,

but a fragment of it,

a shell, without depth,

cracking like the speaker itself--

interrupts the silence.

"Bow your heads in prayer," it says.

Confused eyes stare at the oval grill

awkwardly jutting out of an ancient beige wall.

The voice, more broken now, continues.

"We have just received word that the President has been shot."

Vaguely we try to recall just what a President is;

visions of white-haired men in blue coats leap out of history books into

our brains, blur, roll into each other. Names, mostly from holidays,

flash through our minds.

And one more…

Again the electronic crackling,

as if the speaker itself does not wish to hear the news:

"President Kennedy was shot this afternoon in Dallas."

A pause. A sound like weeping. "Pray for him."

Dozens of eyes,

glassy,

confused,

watch the teacher sit in stunned silence at her desk,

tears welling in her gray eyes,

the ruler grasped still tightly in her palm,

some connection to the world which has ended so abruptly.

Her face quivers, the gray in her hair even duller,

and her head slips to the desk.

We look at each other, recognizing

that something is terribly, unalterably wrong,

and bow our heads as well.

Eternity goes by.

No sound in the room but the humming of the clock

and the almost imperceptible click of its hand

every minute.

An airplane in the distance rattles the blinds on the window.

Somewhere a woman is calling someone,

her pained voice reaching out into the bright autumn sky.

Somewhere a baby is crying.

And we sit, heads on our desks, unsure exactly

what it all means,

still as we have ever been, waiting.

Waiting.

And the history book images flood back in:

Abraham Lincoln was a President who had been shot, but that was long ago,

very long ago,

and the quaking voice from the speaker had said, "this afternoon."

Voices from the mind: fathers' voices, mothers' voices,

in dinner conversation,

working around the edge of a roast,

red and dripping,

saying something about a new age, a new life for the country,

a new hope.

The speaker comes to life again, startling us out of our thoughts;

the voice is choking back tears.

"President John F. Kennedy died this afternoon in a Dallas hospital."

Wailing from somewhere down the hall.

Silence in the classroom.

Our faces blank, our minds blank.

All silent.

The speaker fades.

In the halls, there is silence.

Something terrible has happened, something

which will shape and define our lives.

So young, but we know that.

And we file quietly to our buses,

no tears in our eyes.

On this day, the tears are left to the grownups.

On this day, it helps to be a child.

And the buses roll through empty streets,

early afternoon traffic

stilled by the flickering blue light

of the television screens all are staring at,

and we go home to the arms of our waiting mothers,

and the blue lights transfix us too.

Perhaps some of us cry then.

Perhaps some of us wait

for the scratchy images

of a frigid November morning

with a horse-drawn carriage

rolling along the street lined

with men in black and

women in dark veils and

the young boy raising his hand

in a silent salute,

or perhaps we wait until the small flame

begins its eternal vigil,

solitary on the hillside,

or perhaps we never cry at all,

and return to our desks

on Monday,

bursting with children's vigor,

forgetting what we have seen

and heard,

not fearing the next crackle of the tiny speaker.

But there are some memories,

stark or vivid,

that haunt and cling and will not let go.

And there are some tears—shed or withheld—that never go away.

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