fabrisse

Some of you know that I was booked on the Lockerbie flight. My boss, in a fit of pique, told me I had to stay an extra day at the office because he didn't think the program I'd written would work right and we'd need the day to fix the problems. It cost me $75 to change my ticket.

In the event, my program did exactly what I thought it would do and we were done by 3 pm. We closed the school for the following day which gave me a chance to pack.

I didn't listen to radio, had no tv, and only got the first publication of the day for English language papers which means that I had not one inkling that the flight had been knocked out of the sky by a terrorist bomb. When I landed in Boston, I was literally the last person off the plane because I was recovering from an appendectomy and had strained myself with all the travel. My entire family was waiting for me, something unusual enough for me to comment on it.

All of this is to say that Lockerbie lives in my memory somewhat differently from the way it lives in other people's. I had no one on it. But in a very real way, I see an alternate universe for my family if I'd been able to change my flight back -- as I'd tried to do -- to the one a day earlier than I took.

It's all coming back, now.