Unafraid: Life in Jittery Times
“I just keep thinking, it will start with some random, unsuspecting New Yorker opening a letter, and why shouldn’t it be me?”
My sister’s voice shivered nervously down the phone line. It was November of 2001, and the country was in the throes of the anthrax scare – when 22 people got sick and five died, including that little old lady in Connecticut who had no connection to anything. To my sister, it looked like the opening salvo of a new attack, one that would sweep the nation. One that would start with her. She hunkered down in her apartment and awaited the worst, eyeing each incoming electricity bill warily as a stamped missive of doom.
I said the necessary things: calm down, be rational, think about the improbability. I said it was natural to expect the worst – she had been in New York on September 11th, after all, while I was camped out in front of cnn in another city. So I didn’t make a fuss about her weird behavior, and that crisis passed.
As the months and years ticked by, as the terror alert level vacillated between orange and yellow, she and her husband bought a bigger apartment, and renovated it. It was a good investment. They were saving for retirement, oh yes, they would be ready for whatever life threw their way. They carefully built up their safety high around them, one share of stock at a time.
