9/11

Trenna’s Birthday, 11 September

Trenna had no recollection of ever having a birthday party as a child.

I found that hard to take as my family always made a big deal of my birthday, even though it was just 2 day’s after my little sister’s birthday and just 3 days after Christmas.

So when I met Trenna I tried to make birthdays a bit special.

Where possible, and it almost always was possible, I would take the day off work and spend it with her. And that was what I did on Tuesday, 11 September 2001.

11 September 2001

We went for a lovely picnic at Wireless Hill Park and took some curries to eat at a picnic table there. The weather was beautiful, sunny but not too hot. We then walked along the paths at the Park and drank in the profusion of Western Australian wild flowers that were in flower on that Spring day.

The Park, which really is an oasis in the middle of suburbia, is only about 15 minutes drive from our home and was never busy in the middle of the week.

It was peasant and relaxing.

After that we went to the movies, which was not something we did a great deal of, but it was Trenna’s birthday, so why not?

We saw The Tailor of Panama, starring Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Daniel Radcliffe (in his screen debut). It is from a John le Carré novel and the Director was John Boorman.

After the movie we bought a Supreme Pizza from the nearby Happy Days Pizza place and enjoyed it at home with iceberg lettuce, avocado and fresh basil leaves from our garden. It had been a really pleasant birthday day.

We had both enjoyed it.

After Dinner

We finished dinner and I stacked the dishwasher and tidied up whilst Trenna took pills, washed her hands and took her remaining wine into the lounge room for an evening of telly. It was a bit after 9.30 pm in Perth.

I had just walked in to join her when it became obvious she was transfixed to the TV. I looked and took in the scene. I realised later that part of her thoughts were about memories of being to the Twin Towers, and her knowing someone who worked in the that area.

My immediate thought was that it was some sort of satirical spoof or some other fiction. So I grabbed the remote control and switched stations – they were all showing the same scenes.

My next reaction was that it was real, but just a terrible aviation accident.

Just then, the second plane flew into the other tower.

Connections

The tragedy obviously effected different people in different ways, and with different intensity.

As mentioned, in 1981 and 1982 Trenna toured the USA and stayed in Brooklyn. Her travel mate’s cousin worked very close to the World Trade Centre and Trenna and her friend Toni joined him in a bar there on a few occasions.

Trenna was quite concerned about his welfare, but never found out if he was among the 25,000 people killed or injured. I know she thought about it fairly often in subsequent years.

The other way it effected her, and I am in no way trying to diminish the real horror of that day, is that from then on, every birthday, especially for the several years after 2001, we were inundated in the media by reminders of this very sad day.

It did take the shine off her birthday for a number of years.

More to Come

As I write this I can think of quite a few other stories of things that happened – both planned and unplanned – on Trenna’s birthdays. They will form part of a post on that topic in the future.

In the meantime:

Happy 65th Birthday, Tren!