At nine yesterday morning, 288 hours after the attacks of September 11, I walked into Delta's Crown Room in Terminal B at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport.
It was crowded. It was normal.
I was returning home having spoken to the convention of the National Federation of Republican Women, in San Antonio, Texas.
1,541 women made the trip to San Antonio for a convention which had been in the planning stages for years.
According to the event planners they had only some 400 cancellations, meaning about three-quarters of the women showed up.
It was not quite the same as it would have been, if only because of the references to the attacks, the President's speech, and the calls to pull together by the political speakers. But it was close.
It was commonplace.
When I left from Dulles International Airport on Thursday, it had not been a normal trip. It was my first trip since the attack and I, was unsure how long the screening process would take.
So, at 6:30 am I was rolling through the airport toward the Delta ticket position for my 10:30 flight. The process was not much longer than normal. So, I took an 8:45 flight which was about a third full.
While I was waiting to board it seemed to me that the terminal was quieter than normal. However, I wasn't certain I could remember what it sounded like before, so I asked the guy standing next to me waiting for the boarding call. He agreed. It was subdued. Not normal.
By 6:30 yesterday morning - 72 hours later - at San Antonio's airport, the flight to Atlanta was full, and the passengers waiting to board were fully engaged in the normal purr of early morning conversation.
Over the course of the past three days there have been a series of special events. Starting with Thursday evening there was the President's speech; then there was the celebrity telethon; and the dramatic ceremony before the baseball game between the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves; then yesterday's ceremony at Yankee Stadium
All were extraordinary events, having become commonplace in their power, their warmth, their appropriateness, and the comfort they have provided to a still-grieving America.
The country is gathering itself and returning to normal. The definition of normal, however, has changed.
Traffic is flowing normally but people seem to be a bit more gentle in their driving habits. Road rage over someone not putting on their blinker before changing lanes seems less than pointless.
The grocery store is, again, fully stocked with the normal amount of milk, eggs and bread although the necessity of having dozens of different types of hair spray, shaving cream, and paper products to choose from seems less vital to our national survival than it did before the attack.
The NCAA played its footballs games; and the NFL played its games. Flags are back at full-staff. It is all normal, but it doesn't seem quite right; like listening to a favorite oldie, performed by a different group at a slightly slower tempo.
Normal will never be the same for the families of those killed and badly injured in the attacks; nor for the men and women in uniform; nor, even, for middle aged men getting on airplanes.
Read a very moving e-mail from a U.S. Naval Ensign to his dad who is also a Naval officer, as well as the WWII poster of the day, and the Catchy Caption on the Secret Decoder Ring page.
This past weekend 1,500 women made the decision to attend a political convention. It wasn't quite the same as it would have been, but they had decided to return to normal. If Democratic women have a similar meeting planned, I hope they hold it, as well. And if they do, I know they will exhibit the same grace and style.
It is not a surprise that it was a group of American women who, in the shadow of the Alamo, made the decision to get back to a regular routine; that it was the women who balanced a partisan political convention with calls for cooperation with the opposition; that it was the women who had the strength to mix their grief with a two-day celebration of freedom.
Not a surprise at all.
Commonplace.
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