Happy Ethiopian New Year!
We celebrated with a big family dinner last night. Everyone cooked different Ethiopian foods. Rose was very happy, and put down about two pounds of red lentils and injera like you wouldn't believe. Everyone looked to her for technique on eating the food, and she has serious technique. You wouldn't think it would be difficult to eat with your hands, but it can be kind of tough to do it gracefully. The food was great, though, and we nearly missed beating the all-time most people at family dinner record with 30 people. It was weird, though, five 'regulars' didn't show, so we should have smashed the record… Not that I'm competitive.
We tried to take D & Rose's pictures before dinner because I dressed them in the traditional outfits we brought back from Ethiopia. Rose got hers as a parting gift from the orphanage and we bought D one. It was a disaster. I was in a couple of the pictures and I think you can see my level of frustration skyrocket. Why in the world I thought I could get one decent picture of two children with 28 kibitzers behind the camera, I have no idea! (My apologies to the kibitzers who read this.) There was one picture where you can actually see both me and Chuck pinching Dillon because Rose is all smiles and he picks that moment to totally zone out and not listen to anyone. That was the last picture, I called it after that because I don't normally resort to anything approaching physical reprimands with my kids and when I feel the need to pinch them, you can pretty much tell I need some space.
Aside from the unfortunate pre-dinner photo episode, it was a lovely evening and we had a great meal.
We ate leftovers tonight, which actually went over pretty well for the second time around. But it was still Ethiopian food, so I figure I am still respecting my daughter's cultural heritage by serving it. I pretty much literally cooked all day yesterday just making two dishes to bring to the dinner, so I really didn't have time to do much cooking after work today. Particularly because my kids are ready for dinner at 5:15 pm, and they don't much like to wait.
Despite the reason for a festive occasion in Ethiopia, I felt pretty down today. Clearchannel or some big media corp. was playing some sort of 9/11 tribute after I dropped D at school and was looking for a traffic report. I was sort of compelled to listen, and despite some issues I had with the content and delivery, I still cried during some of it.
I saw the planes hit pretty much real-time. I was watching some stupid morning show like maybe "the View" and they flashed over to the news as it was happening. I wouldn't normally have been home at that time, but I was still on Maternity leave with Dillon and was breastfeeding him in front of the TV. I was sitting in a big comfy chair, sleepy and zoned out with a 20-day-old baby and this crazy thing happened. I called Chuck, he was at Strive. Then I called my mom, worried about my aunts who live in NY. Then, probably like almost everyone else in America, I just sat there pretty much glued to my television while we saw the scene replayed again and again.
It makes me sick just thinking about it.
I bought Mordicai Gerstein's book, 'The Man Who Walked Between the Towers' for Dillon a while ago. It's a children's book, written after 9/11 about a tightrope artist and walking in 1974 between the towers. It's a wonderful story, but I haven't given it to Dillon yet. Because there is this line: "Now the towers are gone." on a blank page. It wraps up sweetly, about how they will live in people's memories. But I'm not ready for the inevitable question that will come up when I read this book to Dillon.
"Why?"