September 27, aboard the S.S. Badger (The Lake Michigan Car Ferry)

When I originally decided to stay in Maine for an extra month after Peg left, I had this idea to travel home slowly, taking lots of detours to see sights and to visit friends and relatives. I’d camp, cook out, get up early, stop for the day at noon, and enjoy myself.

It goes without saying that I abandoned that idea after September 11. The trip I’ve taken has been different in virtually every respect from the one I planned. Instead of adventuring and lollygagging, I’ve found myself moving from family member to family member — driving extra-long days in order to be in familiar locales, seeking out motels I’ve stayed in before, scanning the radio dial over and over, to find the familiar voices of the NPR program hosts. Yes, I went Christmas shopping in Freeport, Maine. Yes, I drove off the New York Thruway to see the place where Mormons believe Joseph Smith discovered the Book of Mormon, and to drive along the lovely shore of Lake Ontario. Yes, I even took a walk along Lake Michigan yesterday in the freezing cold. But everything I do takes on the form and substance of my grief — and plays against the background of Bob and Neil and Noah and Robert and Linda. (I time myself, to make sure my absences from the car won’t interrupt anything —anything — important on NPR. I haven’t shut off the radio in four days of driving, haven’t plugged in a CD, haven’t opted, even, for my own moment of silence. I’ve become one of those people I’ve heard about (on the radio, of course) who become convinced that if they stop monitoring the news, some new bad thing will happen.) In the rare moments when thoughts of the attacks have moved to the back of my consciousness, I’ve felt guilty afterwards, caught in the act of thinking about something else (which of course is another sure way to bring about a new disaster).

In the days since I left Maine, the radio reports have begun to change. Now, there are very few stories about the disaster sites themselves, and very few about the people who died. Now, the focus is on the U.S. effort to "root out terrorism." Who has signed on to be our ally this hour? Who has severed ties with the Taliban? What is the credible risk of a bioterrorism attack? A chemical weapon attack? What can you do with a crop duster? Have any people with Arabic-sounding names taken crop-duster lessons? What is the latest from the Pakistani emissaries in Afghanistan? I find myself angry at these new reports, not only because they force me to confront the inevitable — the United States will bomb Afghanistan — but because they seem to be telling me, "enough grieving for people you never met! It’s time to move on and Deal With The Situation." I don’t want to deal with this situation. I will never be ready to move on.

Signs of the disaster are everywhere you look — if you know what you’re looking for. If you dropped the proverbial intelligent Martian onto the highway system in the United States right now, I don’t think she would guess that our country has suffered a devastating attack that resulted in a breathtaking loss of life. If she were a Martian anthropologist, she might draw some interesting conclusions about our fascination-cum-obsession with our flag; flags appear in store windows, car windows, on the sides of buildings, on people’s bicycles, in newspaper and television ads. (I even saw one made out of colored plastic cups stuck into a chainlink fence.) She would probably also conclude that retailers have decided that espousing religion is good for business; magnetic signs, billboards, and sheets of posterboard in shop windows everywhere announce "God Bless America."

I wonder what the observant Martian would think about the new security measures I’m noticing. For me, these changes in security stand out as the most dramatic features of my cross-country trip. Time after time, they reduce me to tears.

Of course that’s not particularly unusual; I’ve cried several times a day, every day, since the eleventh. But most of my tears have been prompted by images of the disaster sites, or by names, stories or photos of victims. These tears are more abstract. They’re philosopher’s tears—tears about principles, concepts, symbols that have fallen—or that will fall, as we enter into yet another bloody war.

Near Niagara Falls, New York, I find my route to the U.S.-Canada border blocked with orange cones. Is this road construction, or something more ominous—will I not be allowed to cross the border? I wander through residential streets and come back at the route from a different direction. Clear sailing. Now I wonder why I’m able to proceed coming from this direction; is it a mistake? Will I be stopped and sent back to the U.S.—or worse? (Once normalcy is disrupted, the apparently normal becomes an object of suspicion.) No; I make it to the border, where I find that a kind of exit station has been constructed on the U.S. side. There, I am questioned by a U.S. customs agent, surrounded by a group of military guys (six? a dozen?) in fatigues, carrying some kind of weapons. In my memory, they have become machine guns, though to be honest, I do not know what kind of guns they were—only that they were guns. On the U.S.-Canada border. The longest unfortified border in the world. The questions are just slightly hostile (his ears briefly prick up when I say I’ve come from Maine; the news was out that some of the hijackers had come through Portland), but perfunctory. It’s not the questions, it’s the guns.

I am sobbing by the time I reached the Canadian customs agent. After proceeding through where-did-you-come-from -where-are-you-going -what-is-all-this-stuff, she asks me—in that special flat, affect-less voice customs officials use—why I was crying. It isn’t a recreational question.

I’m crying because everything has changed here. I’m crying because I was just met by soldiers carrying guns. At the longest undefended border in the world.

On my way out of Canada, a day later, I stop in the wrong place. Then I leave my car in gear; the group of customs officials tell me to move the car, put it in neutral and put on the emergency brake. Translation: you’ll be here a while. But not really. They search my car—sort of—but clearly they don’t think a white girl is relevant in the Hunt For Terrorists. The search is cursory. They do ask me why I have so much stuff—am I moving? Well, yes. I give the same story I gave at the other border. They ask me if I have weapons. I should say "well, I have a Swiss Army knife—that seems relevant these days, doesn’t it?" But instead, acting on the combined theories that: 1) everything that can become a weapon will, and 2) confession is good for the soul, I inform them that I have a camping stove. The agents snort derisively.

This time, I cry with relief—relief that I am apparently not a terrorist. And with frustration; clearly racial profiling was working in my favor yet again.

This morning, as I wait to board the car ferry across Lake Michigan, an employee of the ferry, apologizing profusely, searches my car briefly. And I wonder, during her 15-second search, does she really know what she’s looking for? These searches seem so perfunctory. I have a very full car; to search it adequately (for what, Lisa? Razor blades?) would take at least an hour—probably a lot more. Is it because I’m a white woman that they’re perfunctory? (Well, yeah.) Are any of the scores of people being detained anything other than male, Middle Eastern and Muslim? Surely there are folks in this network who don’t fit that profile, aren’t there? Don’t you suppose someone had a white girlfriend? Couldn’t I be that person?

The ferry is leaving Ludington, Michigan, bound for Wisconsin. A Coast Guard vessel is escorting us as we leave the port. I’m crying again.