BOSTON — The flags are still draped from the houses on the block. They went up in September in quick succession, like sports fans in a stadium performing the wave. They’ve stayed there, day and night, huge flags somewhat the worse for the weather, covering the sides of the tall houses for more than three months.
But now a neighbor who has hung one asks me sheepishly, "how will I know when it’s OK to take it in?"
His is not a case of fading patriotism, just a question. When, he is asking, do we return to whatever normal is? When do the alarm bells recede into white noise? Is it disrespectful to wonder when life goes back or forward to some semblance of ordinariness?
On Sept. 11, we said, everything changed. Safety was shattered. Irony was dead. Materialism was trivial. Comedy was an inappropriate affect.
On the first day of that post-9/11 era, with fresh, horrific images, everything felt like a matter of life and death. We made resolutions under the influence of our emotions — to live intensely, to care, to remember.
Now we face the new year. Sept. 11 suddenly becomes something that happened last year in a country that has too often trivialized the past as "sooo last year."
We get up in the morning waiting to see if the other shoe — a black high-top stuffed with explosives perhaps — has dropped. We check to see if they’ve caught bin Laden. We watch the rescue workers still pulling bodies out of the wreckage. We watch widows and children achingly struggle through the holidays.
But questions tiptoe over the threshold of the new year that feel as delicate as my neighbor’s query about the flag. When does Afghanistan go on page three? When is it OK to again "lose it" in traffic? When is it permitted to worry again about … your weight? How do we hold on and move on?
January, we are told, is named for Janus, the Roman god with two faces looking in opposite directions. One toward the past, the other toward the future. That feels about right for January of 2002. We stand here with two minds, struggling with remembrance and resilience.
Watching a year-end review, I asked myself: How often will they replay the plane crashing into that tower? If they stop, will it dim our memory of terror?
It is remarkable how much Americans have adjusted to a changed reality. When the president instructed us to be vigilant and go about our lives, we asked each other: How? What yoga position do you practice for that twist?
Yet, driving into a downtown parking lot these days, I automatically pop my trunk and take out my ID to show the guard. Going to the plane — two hours early — I take off my shoes without a second thought.
Does resilience, the return to some set point of normalcy, come with the price tag of muted remembrance? What is the alternative? When will we stop commemorating the eleventh of every month? Feb. 11? March 11? Will it feel disloyal?
As one year turns into another with Janus guarding the gate, we are experiencing what all mourners go through, although I do not in any way equate our shock, our loss of security — even innocence — with the loss of friend and family. Those who suggest that we all share the families’ pain remind me of earnest young couples who insist " we are pregnant." Only one goes through labor.
But after every traumatic loss, there is the fear of being paralyzed with grief. And the fear that recovery requires forgetting. There is relief when an hour and then a day and then a week goes by without the sharp stab of memory. And there is guilt.
The mantra of 20th-century history was "Never Again." I never knew if that meant we should live every minute with our dukes up, expecting the worst of history to repeat itself. Do we recover from history only to be shocked again?
Soon it will snow again, and maybe then my neighbor will bring the flag in and fold it away for the next holiday. At some point, Sept. 11 will find its rightful place on the calendar beside Dec. 7 and Nov. 22.
On New Year’s Day by tradition, we make resolutions. Resolution itself is a word with dual meaning. One points to the past, resolving old problems. The other plans for the future.
Past and future. Remembrance and resilience. The complexity of dealing with loss and life split the god Janus in two. But we move on, carrying memory in our most human knapsack.
Ellen Goodman can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or send e-mail to EllenGoodman@Globe.com.
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