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The challenge of putting our private lives in some kind of order played out in public as well. Baseball resumed, with players wearing fire fighters' caps. The markets, reopening on Monday, were all woozy and uncertain, as people came to a new understanding of what it means to trade securities. The week's 1,370-point drop was the worst in history, but it told you something when people said it could have been worse. At least the lights stayed on. In downtown restaurants, there were more people at the bar than at the tables.
The planes were once again aloft, some of them anyway, even as the airlines announced they were canceling 20% of their scheduled flights and laying off workers by the tens of thousands. Consigned to history are the luxuries of curbside check-in, e-tickets and the right to carry a corkscrew onboard. Peter Hannaford, a passenger aboard United Flight 564 from Denver, wrote in the Washington Times about the pilot's remarks that day: "I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today," the pilot said. "We don't have any new instructions from the Federal Government, so from now on, we're on our own." He reassured passengers about improved airport security, but then he went on. "If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say, 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect, here is what you should do: every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person--pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes, anything that will throw him off balance. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport, and the authorities will take it from there. Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few confederates, but there are 200 of you. You can overwhelm them.
"Now, since we're a family for the next few hours, I'll ask you to turn to the person next to you, introduce yourself, tell them a little about yourself, and ask them to do the same."
The American landscape was one long Memorial Day parade; flags were so precious they were stolen. Yet it was clear that people ached to live bigger lives, to find some way to be a brave and generous part of what most of us were consigned to watch on television. In Napa Valley a four-year-old boy with only one arm cleaned his family's house and took his dollar in pocket money down to the local fire brigade to send to the fire fighters in New York. A five-year-old girl in Audubon, N.J., renamed all her dolls George Bush. An Air Force major who had survived the Pentagon attack went for a muffin at the Korean-run coffee shop near his office one morning last week. "I'll ring you up," said the owner, "but you don't have to pay." A woman had come by earlier, put a bunch of money in the owner's hand and told her to pay the bill of any soldier who walked through the door that day. "The woman who gave her the money had just lost her husband or a son in the disaster at the Pentagon," the major said. "This poor woman should have been in deep mourning. Instead she's buying coffee and doughnuts for us guys in uniform. I have no answers to how someone cultivates a heart as large as that."