Where were you when....

There are two things I am thinking about today. One is the Queen's death but I won't take up much space here about it. Suffice it to say that I have always been a monarchist, especially now that I live in the US. 'nuff said. Except that: She acceded to the throne the year I was born and, after my parents passed, represented in some way a link to the world that I grew up in, the things that had been important. I also realized as the tributes have come in, that she was a woman respected because she always remained calm, dignified and somehow reassuring. Her speech during COVID: "We shall meet again" brought tears to my eyes then and her sweet small skit with Paddington Bear during her Platinum Jubilee a few months ago: "Thank you Ma'am" . . . "How very kind" also brings tears. Again, 'nuff said.

The second thing is 9/11; September 11, 2001. Where was I when it happened, what do I remember about it?

In 2001 Richard and I were living in a small town in southern Oregon; I was working as an Assistant Registrar at Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) and Richard was working for a large window company based in our small town. He hated every minute of it so we agreed that he should quit it in July; he was tentatively offered a job at OIT but the wheels of academia grind slowly so, to take his mind off being at home and unemployed, we decided to go to Scotland for three weeks. Laurie was there, working at a riding school in Aberdeen. Although I write a lot about Ireland, my DNA is actually more Scottish than Irish--three of my grandparents were Scots. 

We also wanted to see our dear friend Sheila who was living in Reading, England. Working through emails among us all, Laurie, Sheila and ourselves, we decided it would be fun, for R's and my first week in Scotland, to rent a cottage in the middle of the country. Both Laurie and Sheila could meet us in Edinburgh and spend that week with us. We decided on Aberfeldy in Perthshire, which is located about an hour's drive north of Edinburgh and is quite close to the castles and palaces we wanted to visit. The plan was to be there until Sept 5th and then R and I would drive Laurie to Aberdeen so she could go back to her job at the riding school. We would continue on around the north end of Scotland toward the west where my ancestors had lived, in the Black Isle in the area of Ross & Cromarty. We'd spend five days there and then come down to the Scottish border with England and visit the Border Abbeys for three days. We would end our holiday by going back to Glasgow and returning first to Vancouver (we'd found a cheap round-trip charter flight from there) and then driving down to southern Oregon. An ambitious plan but we were 21 years younger ;)

All went well with our trip. We drove up to Vancouver from Klamath Falls, our town in Oregon, parked our car in a Park 'n Fly hotel, flew to Glasgow and rented our car. Richard adapted quite quickly to driving (thankfully it was mainly motorway) and we found our first bed and breakfast just outside of Stirling. By the way, this was the era before cellphones, before I had a digital camera. All of my photos from that trip were taken with a "regular" camera, with rolls of film which I eventually developed a few months after we returned. I've had them stuck in a shoebox because I never got around to putting them in a photo album. Today, when I decided to finally write a blog, I had to scan the photos with my iPhone. Some of them may have shadows on them....

The b & b was lovely, with beautiful gardens and the back of the house, where our room was, looked out on a field of sheep. We woke to the sound of sheep grazing (yes, it was so quiet we could hear them munch.) After we left the b & b we drove to Stirling Castle and enjoyed touring it:

 We then continued to Edinburgh, found a parking spot and went to the train station to await first Laurie's arrival and then Sheila's. What a joyous reunion! We piled into the car and found our way out of Edinburgh and to the cottage that would be our home for the next week:

We had so much fun there. As the photo shows, it was quite large. Four bedrooms, large sitting room, three bathrooms, a cozy kitchen and a backyard at the end of which was a path to the town of Aberfeldy. (We learned quickly to watch out for the stinging nettles!) Aberfeldy wasn't a large town and we actually didn't spend much time there, just went to the grocery store there, had some Chinese takeaway one night. We spent our days touring the countryside. We went to Menzies Castle, Scone Palace, Blair Castle and Glamis. 

The photos aren't in any particular order, but the one with the red ivy is Scone, the grey one just above is Menzies, Laurie is standing beside a Douglas fir planted by, guess who, David Douglas, at Scone. I think the fountain in the middle of the maze where Sheila and I are sitting was at Glamis and the bed that Laurie and Sheila are standing in front of was supposedly Bonnie Prince Charlie's at Menzies. There are a lot of other photos in my box but (1) I can't tell where they were taken and (2) it's difficult to scan them all. Wish my scanner on my printer worked! 

One morning while Sheila and Laurie were sleeping, Richard and I climbed a local mountain, Schiehallion. It was bitterly cold and windy, I was struggling 3/4 of the way up but Richard was determined to plant the small US flag that he had carried in his suitcase from Oregon as high as he possibly could on the mountain. Considering what happened the following week, I hope that the flag was still flying. Of course when I look at the photo, it was so tiny I can barely see it, but he looks SO proud!

We also went to the village where my grandmother was born, Cupar, just down the road from St. Andrew's, and to Dundee, where my grandfather was born, where my grandparents met and where my great grandparents are buried. In fact, Sheila and Laurie managed to find their headstone which had been broken into three large pieces in the Dundee cemetery and they pieced it together! 

We went to a play one night at Pitlochry Theatre, a very good production of "The Admirable Crichton." It was written by J. M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame and it felt very special to once again be seeing British theatre performed by Brits. 

The week went by too fast and soon we were saying good-bye to Sheila in Edinburgh and driving Laurie to Aberdeen. It felt very hard to say good-bye to Laurie, in her spartan accommodations at the riding school but she seemed very happy there, surrounded by her beloved horses and good friends. And off we went, through Inverness and over to Strathpeffer, the Victorian "spa" town that was next to Dingwall, where my ancestors had lived. 

We saw the town, saw the house my great great grandparents had lived in (which was for sale and the owner kindly took us around inside it.) We went to the old graveyard where the ancestors were buried, which I think engendered my love of cemeteries. It was there where I first "felt" that my ancestors had been people who had loved their family, and that I was descended from strong Highland stock. We drove along one-lane roads (terrifying!) to see remote lochs and enjoyed the friendliness of our hostess at our b & b:

My great grandparents' house which was also a store back in the 1800s.

Our hostess in Strathpeffer

Then, on Sept 11th morning, we began the drive down from the Highlands to the next part of our trip. Called "The Border Abbeys Way" it's a string of old abandoned abbeys along, well, along the Scottish/English border. We stopped at Pitlochry for lunch and as I was looking at a gift shop, Richard came in, looking shaken, stunned. He said "Put that down and come into the pub, the Twin Towers are under attack." I followed him and, as we watched, the second plane flew into the tower, the CNN reporters trying frantically to report on something that none of us yet understood.

We spoke to each other and, hearing our American accents, the people in the pub said, "Are you Americans? We are so terribly sorry." And that was the refrain we heard for the next several days. By the time we had traveled another few hours, listening to the radio in the car, we learned it would be impossible to go home on the day we had planned (Friday.) With no other choice, we continued with our original plans, feeling slightly numb, trying at every stop, every public phone booth, to reach first Laurie to somehow, well, reach out to her. And then to Sheila who immediately said we should come to England but we couldn't think through doing that. Our flight was meant to go back from Glasgow, and in an era without cellphones, without Expedia, I didn't know how we could rearrange things. We just kept going, stopping at various points along the way, even stopping at an old farm where my great great grandparents, the Butters, had farmed. Called Pictillum, it's located just outside Perth. It was as if, by continuing on, we could hold back the dreadful knowledge. 

We arrived late at our b & b, our host was quite snippy: "I was about to give your room away, you are so late." We looked at her and said "Well, it's been a difficult day." Anyway, we had the room and the next days, we toured the abbeys as planned. They were hauntingly beautiful. Somehow, despite all our worries and the world situation, there was something about them the was peaceful and soothing.

We also traveled over to the coast, to the site where Celtic Christianity was established and which is still considered one of the holiest islands in England. Like St Michael Mount in Cornwall, it's not quite an "island" all of the time, there is a causeway which is covered over with water for several hours a day, so crossing has to be done with care. We queued up and drove across after first disinfecting the car (as well as everything else, the UK had been going through an outbreak of foot and mouth.) We wandered around the island, feeling its beauty, feeling its peace. There is an old church there, part of which dates back to Saxon times as well as a ruined castle that you can see a little farther in the photo below. Oh, I just remembered that Ann Cleeves' latest Vera Stanhope novel is based in Lindisfarne; I am looking forward to reading it:

I've come across another photo in my box, of a rainbow above one of the villages we drove through on our trip. I'd like to think I took it as a message of hope but I honestly can't remember if it was pre-9/11 or post. I do remember the other photo is of "Scott's View," the view that the writer Sir Walter Scott always enjoyed so much on his visits to this part of the country. It's said that he came here so often that when he died and the hearse was passing on its way to Dryburgh Abbey (yes, one of the abbeys we visited), his horse automatically stopped. 

Although the daytimes were quiet and aimless, my evenings back at the b & b were quite frantic. What were we going to do? We had only booked the b & b from Tuesday through Thursday, intending to leave early on Friday to head to Glasgow for our planned afternoon departure for Vancouver. And that wasn't going to happen. Our b & b hostess, who had at least allowed me to use her Internet, said it was too bad but she couldn't extend our stay as she was fully booked. She had nowhere else to recommend us; really, she was a pill. Our wonderful hostess up in Strathpeffer had sent a caring and warm email, inviting us back up to the Highlands but it was too far to go to wait for what might be very short notice of our flight being finally rescheduled.

So I reached out to my "Mollies" a group of online LDS friends I had known for years; since I lived in Hamilton and first joined the LDS church. I knew one of them lived in Edinburgh and sent an SOS to the list. Sure enough, she email'd me as soon as she read my message. "Don't worry, come to Edinburgh," she wrote. "I will have everything arranged, there are already three families that want to take care of you." 

So we drove to Edinburgh on Friday, met Elizabeth at the church and were quite literally wrapped in her and a few others' embraces. An elderly lady in her 80s had "won" us, because her house was the quietest. When she heard that we hadn't actually "seen" Edinburgh on the trip, she insisted on our getting up on Saturday morning and she took us on the bus to the city, walked our feet off and, yes, we saw Edinburgh from beneath the Castle, to Holyrood, up the Royal Mile and down. We had learned on Friday that our charter company (which sadly went bankrupt after this) had managed to get a plane for Sunday in Glasgow. So we knew we were going home and we could relax on Saturday.

Margaret, the lovely lady who welcomed us to her home

We had basically been wearing these same clothes for three days, afraid to unpack more than the barest essentials of underwear, thinking we'd be called to the airport at any time.

One special memory I have of that day is that as we were passing St. Giles Cathedral (where the Queen will lie tomorrow and a special service be said) we saw people going in. We asked the man standing guard what was going on. He told us there was a special service going on with local religious leaders and one of the US consulate people. We turned to leave, thinking it was only for special people, and he said "Please, come in and join us." And we did. It was beautiful. 

When we went to the car rental at Glasgow to return the car on Sunday, they refused to let us pay for the three extra days we had had it. They were so sorry about what had happened, they couldn't charge us for it. And that kindness was what we heard about over and over again as we waited with other anxious passengers for our flight. Those who had remained at Glasgow Airport told of how the Glaswegians had come to the airport, asking them to go home with them. When they said they wanted to stay in case the flights resumed, the local people brought blankets, pillows, food for those three days. 

So, where were we on 9/11? We were in Pitlochry, Scotland. We were forever changed, forever humbled and from that day forward we learned two things: never underestimate the power of humans to do the most terrible, and the most wonderful, things. 

And two, in moments of fear, when you're not sure which way to go, the best thing to do is to hold on, because eventually the answer becomes clear. As a song by Michael McLean says: "The message of this moment is so clear;

And as certain as the rising of the sun.

If your world is filled with darkness doubt and fear,

Just hold on, Hold on; the light will come."