Tree of Life, part two

 October 27, 2018, 11am.

 

I remember it was specifically 11. My wife Norma had a volunteer duty she wanted to make at 11:30, and she was just leaving. I was in my grey gym sweats, not having changed into my day clothes.

 

She opened our front door, and there are SWAT officers out in the street. They yelled over that there was an active shooter situation, that she was go get inside and lock the door.

 

I made a point of staying calm. I looked out the back window, locked the back door, and tried to find some local news coverage. I hunted around on cable, but found nothing local being broadcasted. 

 

A few minutes later, her sister Chris called to say that our neighborhood was on CNN. It was not only on CNN, but was being covered on all the cable news networks. So there was Tree of Life, our backyard neighbor, from a helicopter view, with little information other than there was a shooting involved.

 

No later than quarter after 11, there was a SWAT officer with tactical weaponry on our little side porch. It was very lightly drizzly raining. We said hello to one another, but I largely left him to his business. Shortly after that, I noticed two more officers behind my neighbor Lucy’s house. Her backyard separates ours from the main temple of the synagogue.

 

I think it was about twenty minutes past the hour, no more than thirty, that the New York Times called. They asked for me by name, Benjamin Opie. I described what little I knew, how upsetting it all was. After all, it was my neighbors in that building.

 

I didn’t ask, but I figured out how they came to contact me. They must have looked up the property lots online, found an owner’s name, then looked up my number on directory service. I was probably the only person they found nearby with an active landline, at home during the 11 o’clock hour on a Saturday. Most of my nearby neighbors would have been in temple at the time themselves.

 

The former president would have you believe that nobody pays attention to the Times any more. I want to say that nothing could be further from the truth. The first article, with my name and quotes, was posted online before the hours’ end. I heard back from numerous people, including a friend in Australia and Henry Grimes’ wife Margaret. She called, wanted to know that I was okay. I was so mixed up, I didn’t figure out who she was until we ended our phone call.

 

It was some time around 11:45 (+/-) that the officer told us that the shooter had been taken into custody. We knew a good half hour before it was publicly announced. I watched as a camo-wearing group of SWAT officers did a sweep around the perimeter of Tree of Life, weapons drawn. We just weren’t told if there was more than one person, but now it was clear there was only a single gunman. We were still told to stay inside at least until 12:30, if not later. 

 

I’ve retold these circumstances so many times, they seem very concrete. The next day, several days, becomes more of a blur. After my name was online in the NYT article, later that day I received calls from the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, ABC News. Maybe more. The next day the Daily Beast called, and I was interviewed in my backyard by channel 5 Tel Aviv. After those, my wife said, “Don’t talk to any more of those people.” I was done with them even if she hadn’t said anything.

 

So picture if you will, if you don’t know the streets around me. Tree of Life sits on Wilkins Ave, at the corner of Shady Ave. Travel a short block south on Shady, and you intersect with Solway St. That’s where I live, near the intersection. Shady was blocked from all traffic for several days, and Wilkins in front of Tree of Life was sectioned off for more than a week. I had to enter and exit my street at the other end of the block, and even then I had to show ID at the corner to go home. 

 

Those are the basic circumstances of that day. I suppose there’s not that much to tell really. It does make me feel closer to the circumstances than even if I was across the same neighborhood. 

I've been writing this quickly, with little editing. I'll follow up with more details, and what happened in the following days, in a future post.

 

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Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel. It’s not intended as an elegy or requiem. It’s inspired by the titular meditative space. Feldman said it had echoes of the synagogue in it. It seems like the right piece for today.