Any Day Now
By Kim Forrest
WASHINGTON–My parents are sending me a gas mask.
The typical care package of cookies and extra sweaters has become a thing of the past. Phone calls from home are more urgent and more frequent. The color orange suddenly is not simply a color that makes my skin look green. Whenever a plane flies overhead, I look out my window and stare at the sky. When I stand on the underground platform of the Metro, my eyes wander, analyzing every inch of the station. What I’m looking for, I can’t say. But I’m watching and waiting.
Who knew that living in the world’s most powerful city, our nation’s Capital, could make me feel so powerless?
They tell me it could happen any day now. What “it” will be, no one really knows, although everyone seems to have a theory. Chemical weapons, biological attacks, dirty bombs, weapons of mass destruction, thoughts that were once only found in my nightmares, have become potential realities. And as much as I put on my brave face and smile and laugh with my friends, deep down inside I can’t help but feel fear.
The monsters that once spent the night under my bed on sleepless nights could suddenly be lurking around every corner.
All I know for sure right now is that we’re at war. And watching the news day and night, I can see missiles and bombs exploding in Baghdad as though I am looking out my front door. If I had stayed at school this semester in rural Williamstown, Mass., I think I could be detached from it all, and the TV pictures flashing before me would just be of a faraway land, a place that had no bearing on me or my life. It would, I think, be like watching a movie.
Instead, though, I’m here. And those televised images, it turns out, mean so much more.
They mean that being in Washington, I’m at a greater risk than ever before; that I must be “vigilant,” whatever that means:. that there is a “near certainty” of an attack. But no one can tell me where or when or what. No one can tell me that it’s going to be okay either.
I am told that I have to live my life without fear, to go about my daily business. That means I should go to the Capitol, to the House and Senate office buildings, as I always do. Just grab my congressional press pass and be the tough reporter that I know I should be.
I watch reporters on television from Baghdad and Kuwait and am amazed at how they can pull it all together. As anxious as I am in Washington, I sometimes wonder how journalists courageous enough to be working in the Middle East during a war must feel. I know they’ve been through extensive training before they follow the action, but watching them often leaves me astounded.
Sometimes I think that I could have used some training before I came to Washington-training in how to be normal during a high alert, during a war; Training in how to be in control when I know that I can’t.
In a city where a man on a tractor stuck in a pond brought traffic to a virtual shutdown, along with the fears he planted in the minds of many, I wonder what I can laugh off and when I should really be concerned.
A suspicious package was found the other day only blocks from where I work, and when I was told by my boss to go investigate, I dutifully complied but couldn’t help wanting to run away.
But I didn’t run.
As a girl who was often called a “scaredy-cat” by friends, who cried at horror movies, who hid under the covers during thunderstorms, sometimes I feel like I have something to prove by living in the eye of the storm, as they call it. And as tense as everything gets, I know that there’s a reason I’m here.
I was talking the other day to a friend who expressed her fears about my studying in Washington
“You could come home any time you want, you know,” she said. “You could go back to Williams and you would definitely be safe there. Why don’t you just get out of there?”
I paused for just a second. “I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked, her voice rising.
And for the first time in a long time, I smiled for real. Among all the uncertainties about life nowadays, there was one thing I could say with confidence:
“Because there’s no place I’d rather be.”
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire.
