Nic Narrates

Maybe it’s cliche to write about this sort of thing anymore. Maybe it’s tacky or opportunistic or insensitive. And anyway, hasn’t everything already been said? I’m not a Somebody who lost on that day and I didn’t intend to write this, to write anything about this anymore. But I also didn’t intend to read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close this week either. And now here I am.

I randomly picked it up at the bookstore on Sunday afternoon without really knowing what it was and opened its pages that evening. Page for page this book is a miracle, a gift, a heartbreakingly poignant reminder of what it is to love and to lose. I finished it this morning with unapologetic tears in my eyes during my morning commute. Ironic maybe. The timing.

The story is tied irrevocably to that Tuesday eight years ago (two years ago in the book). To the little boy, Oskar, who lost his father that day without really knowing how, without the good bye his dad tried to give him, without The “I love you.” Are you there? Told from his nine year old perspective, Oskar searches for the lock that matches the mysterious key his deceased father left behind. In his seeking and revisiting, I found myself reminded of things I had forgotten. Minute things.

Things like how no one knew anything anymore, saying “something has happened” but not knowing what. I remember waking up and finding out. My roommate, who wasn’t speaking to me at the time, came to my door and told me after my alarm went off. Never putting much by anything she said (she was overly dramatic, not stupid but not intelligent either), I rubbed my eyes and went into the living room to better explain things to her. And then I saw what she saw and it was unexplainable. Even now.

I watched the buildings come to signify the thousands of people within rather than the capitalist greed they were built on and for. I watched the chaos when they fell. Whoosh. I remember feeling like someone had flipped the switch and a light had gone out. Just like that. Flick. The breaths of all the souls still inside exhaling for the last time. All was right and safe in the world. Until it wasn’t.

With such things weighing on his mind, Oskar “invents” things when he can’t sleep. It’s his way of righting wrongs, of making the world and the people in it safe again. A bird seed shirt. Because “there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don’t have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?” To keep you safe, so you won’t fall. So no one will fall ever again.

But so many did fall. And more than anything else, I remember how quiet it became afterward. I remember the corporeal hush of the days that followed. There were no planes. No jet streams streaked the sky. When I couldn’t sleep that night, I laid awake, not inventing things. I was all alone in the dark stillness. There’s never been a quiet like that since….since before planes were invented, I guess.

I won’t ruin the story for you when you read this book- and you will and should. I won’t tell you if Oskar ever finds what he’s looking for, even though it’s the searching that he thinks keeps him tied to his dad.  But just as he didn’t want to stop looking, I didn’t want to stop reading. I wish there was more, but sometimes there aren’t anymore words or keys. Sometimes there’s just….just what? The quiet we keep? The breaths we still breathe?

Maybe we need birdseed shirts that let us escape from our sadnesses too.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, everyone should read more, in memory, no jokes by Nic