The Four Oxen and the Lion
Photo by Olga Belogolova (05/01/2011)
“So did they actually think this changes everything?” my mother asked me this afternoon, puzzled as I recalled joining thousands of jubilant people in front of the White House late last night following news of the killing of the butcher of 9/11.
Perhaps our spirit has not yet been wrinkled by the rough and cynical hands of time, but for a moment, it felt as if we had won.
No, the monster is not gone. Years of fighting, lost lives and the dangers of terror have not washed away with Osama Bin Laden’s body in the North Arabian Sea.
But for a moment, the partisan bickering came to a hush. Pundits took off their hats and stood shoulder to shoulder, congratulating one another for a change. Honking along the way, cab drivers picked up every straggler in their path, forgetting to run the meter. Service members, families, college students sprinting from libraries, all stood together as one, singing “God Bless America” at stadiums, memorials, monuments and in front of the very television sets where they once witnessed a plane crashing into a tower.
For just that fleeting moment, as I took a sip from a stranger’s bottle of Veuve Clicquot, I thought “United We Stand.”
