bin Laden Day

Maybe it was the pre-dawn party at the White House, or the weird sense of community and closure, but I spent the day thinking May 2 would be declared a national holiday. I can see it now — bin Laden Day.

It will be an obligatory holiday no one will quite know how to celebrate. “Any plans for bin Laden Day?” friends will ask, and the question will prompt an awkward silence, or maybe an inscrutable mixture of relief and displaced, decades-long remorse. Your neighbor will gaze down at his shoes. “Oh, you know …”

bin Laden Day will be recognized by Congress over the objection of the 9/11 widows and widowers, who will say this wasn’t what their loved ones would have wanted. Rush Limbaugh will take up the point. “I like the people of New York,” he will say, “don’t get me wrong …”

Some will say the holiday celebrates a day of justice. Some will say it’s not about the villain we despised, it’s about the turning of an era. A few will decrie the first national holiday to honor a revenge killing.

It will be the only national holiday without a stamp.

On bin Laden Day politicians will give patriotic speeches no one will really want to hear. Outlet stores will hold fire sales. Movies will be half price. Everyone will feel out of place. No one will quite know why.

It’s difficult to believe, but eventually bin Laden day will lose its meaning, because that’s how history is. A day no one could really figure out will be reduced by collective forgetting to a simple occasion for ironic play. It will be spring, after all, the end of our winter of discontent. A day for young people to take off work, dress as cartoon characters, drink from six packs and race shopping carts in the streets.