Assignment number 4 was to write about a newsworthy event (could be local, national, or international) and show how it affected you personally. The assignment also involved interviews and research. I did “interview” Nik for this one, and he concurred that my memories were basically the same as his. This is a skimmed down version of our “meet and get married” story. It was actually a lot more complicated that this but I had a word limit. I don’t totally know that I believe that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, we might have never spoke again. But I guess it’s possible. Still, I do think it is true that 9/11 was an event that put our little shenanigans into perspective. Having our friend, Grant, around as a buffer probably also helped. In the end, I guess it worked out how it was going to work out. Nik is still my best friend and life partner.
Everyone has a 9/11 story, and mine is not that interesting on its surface. But on a personal level, it did change the direction of my life.
I was pushing the snooze button on my 6:15 alarm, procrastinating getting up to go to work and had thus fallen into a much deeper sleep than I had even been in before the alarm vibrator had started shaking my bed awake. I did not hear the phone ring, but I did start to become aware of someone yelling into my answering machine. It was my friend, Dwight, and I knew by the tone and shouty-ness of his usual quiet voice that something was wrong. I thought something was wrong with him. He was a quadriplegic and I was his occasional back-up personal care attendant. As I slowly sat up, wondering if I could get away with taking the light rail several stops in the opposite direction of my work before 9:00am, I started to make out the words “Fire!” and “Washington!” and “Airplane!” What?
I lived in Washington County. And for some reason, I thought there was maybe a plane crash in Washington County that was causing a fire. Though that would be big news, Dwight wouldn’t call me so frantically unless it personally affected either me or him. I rushed outside, thinking that if I could feel the heat or see the flames, I would know if I had to run.
Nothing. Nothing was going on outside. In fact, it was quite peaceful and nice out.
As I walked back in, the phone rang again. I picked it up thinking it would be Dwight again. It was Nik, my husband. But this was several years before he was my husband. I was surprised to hear from him as we had left each other months earlier with no real plans to talk again.
“Grant wants an American perspective about all this. What are you hearing?” He asked.
Grant and Nik were roommates in Toronto, Ontario. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was slowly dawning on me that something big was happening outside of Washington County, Oregon. After Nik told me to turn on my television, he and I watched together as both towers fell on live TV. It was interesting to compare the coverage I was getting on CNN to what they were hearing while flipping through the CBC and BBC and even Al Jazeera. Comparing coverage between several different international news sources about the same event over the next week or so was an eye-opener to me. So much for getting an American’s perspective, they had access to a lot more information than I did.
September 11th, 2001 was so huge and traumatic, for North Americans especially, that it broke what had been a bit of a stalemate between Nik and I. We had a weird relationship thus far, that was mostly failed due not really too much because of us personally, but because of international invisible lines separating countries. As disabled people, we had failed twice to immigrate either way in our efforts to be on the same side of these lines.
We met 8 years before 9/11, in 1993 at a New York guide dog school. He barely spoke English as he was an international student from Sweden. We instantly hit it off. Within an hour of meeting him, I told myself “I’m going to marry him.” We spent 26 days almost entirely together while training our dogs. He was a student at York University, I had one more semester to finish up at the University of Nebraska. We wanted to be together. It made the most sense for me to go home, finish my semester and then try to get a job in Toronto. But in our early 20s, we were overwhelmed by the prospect. And when I started the motions to see if I could get a work visa for Canada, I was turned down due to disability. Nik and I were realists. We decided to go our separate ways.
In the 8 years since, I had gotten a graduate degree, moved to Portland, Oregon and started an information clearinghouse for disabled students at a university. One day, I got a call from a Canadian teacher looking for tech training for a blind student. “I don’t really cover Canada,” I said. “But let me do a little looking around.”
That was where I found SCORE, A Wayne Gretzky sponsored program for blind students that stood for Summer Computer Opportunities in Recreation and Education. And look who I found working at SCORE as a camp counselor? It was my old summer boyfriend, Nik. Should I email him? It had been 8 years, we were mature adults, why not? I can see what became of him.
At first, all seemed well. It was early 2001 and Nik had finished his education, and was working at IBM in Markham, had gotten married and had 2 children. Great! Life was good for Nik, it seemed he had gotten what he wanted. We chatted via email a few times in the next few weeks.
But then, he showed up on my doorstep with the truth. He was separated from his wife. He had gotten married too young. He had just been laid off from IBM along with 12% of their workforce, and he was living in the basement of a Filipino family’s home as his house had to be sold for the divorce. But there was good news! On his way out of IBM, he had taken a contact list of clients he had been working with and one of them wanted to hire him–The one in Portland, Oregon. Could he stay with me for a bit until he got his own place?
“Uh, OK?” I reluctantly agreed.
The next two months were tough. I had a messed-up guy and his elderly, sick guide dog in my cool little bachelorette apartment. I went to work, and he went to work–the job was real and a good one. But despite everyone’s best intentions, no one knew how to go about getting a blind guy via Canada via Sweden to be able to legally work in the U.S. His boss asked me if I could marry him. Not like this, I complained. But that wasn’t even the issue. Lawyers said he wouldn’t pass the physical.
One day, after I had taken his guide dog to my vet because he had a horribly infected tooth and I had paid hundreds for him to get it fixed, I hit my limit of tolerance for the situation.
“You need to leave. Go back to your children. Figure your life out. Get a job where you can actually be legally paid. Get out.”
He was on a plane 48 hours later. And except for a small check in to see if he and the dog made it ok, we hadn’t spoken since.
Until 9/11. And 9/11 was such a huge, perspective changing, distracting event, that it blew whatever weirdness was still lingering out the window. It was during and after 9/11 that we truly became friends. Because we had tried immigration both directions and failed, it was off the table and we never expected to be able to have an intimate relationship. We truly could build a friendship and trust and support each other as friends.
In the 8 years after 9/11, Nik was able to straighten out his life, spend time with his children, get a job, and move to a nicer neighborhood with his roommate, Grant. It wasn’t until his own children moved to the United States with their mother that it ever occurred to us to try again. In 2010, Nik was finally able to legally move here and we started our married life together, 17 years after we met. We will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary in April.
It is difficult to know how long we would have gone without speaking without 9/11. At that point, there was just no way I felt like talking to him for a very long time. I needed a break, and maybe the break would be forever. Only a bazaar and overwhelming situation like 9/11 completely distracting me would have allowed me to answer the phone and talk to him on that day and the days following. It strengthened our relationship and clarified the trust and friendship we eventually developed. Although nothing can make up for the tragedy of so many people brutally killed on September 11th, it is interesting to see how such events change the course of lives in not only the obvious global ways that it did, but on the very personal level. Everyone has a 9/11 story. Mine is not that special. But to me, it pivoted my life in an unexpected way that I am still grateful for each day.
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