My 9/11

Just when I think enough time has passed since the tragedy of September 11^th, 2001 the date comes around again and I, as I have on every anniversary since then, have the TV on.  I always watch the reading of the names. I didn’t know any of them personally, but I don’t think that matters so much as knowing the people who did know them and loved them still miss them terribly each day and always will.

I’ve never written about my experiences of that day, mostly because I, not having been down in lower Manhattan on that particular day, simply didn’t feel right about expressing my own sorrow over the events, because I was safe and so were my loved ones.  But I was deeply affected as I’m sure every American – no, every human being – was.  So here’s what my 9/11 was like.

It was a beautiful, sunny day in early September.  I remember that I had to meet up with my mother in the morning so she could pick up her car which had been repaired at the dealership where my now husband worked at the time.  J and I were not speaking to each other on that morning because we had a major blow-out the night before.  I don’t even remember what it was about.  I remember that I was blow-drying my hair straight that morning because the humidity was low that day and perfect for smoothing out my normally frizzy mane.  I had the radio tuned to my favorite station, Q-104.3, the local classic rock station here in NYC.  They were playing a song by Boston called Foreplay, an instrumental piece which normally flows right into their song Long Time.  I noticed at the end of Foreplay, the music stopped altogether. It was 8:45am.  There was a long pause before the DJ broke in.  I was expecting him to say something about “technical difficulties” but no.  What he said just didn’t make sense.  “A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

What?  I put down the brush and blow-dryer and went to the TV.  I managed to get some news program, I don’t remember what channel.  But there it was: a giant smoking hole in one tower of the Trade Center. 

“Oh dear God!  Oh dear God!” was all I could say over and over again.  I hurried to get ready and headed over to my mom’s house.   In the car, we listened intensely to 1010 WINS news radio for the latest updates.  We couldn’t believe what kind of freak accident would cause such a thing to happen.  By then, the second plane had already hit.  Freak accidents just don’t happen twice!

After a brief exchange with J at the dealership (naturally by this point, all things were forgiven as we had much bigger worries to deal with), Mom and I headed over to the toy store, which I had opened not quite two years before that day.  I met up with my friend, Gary, who worked across the street from my shop for a local newspaper. I didn’t have any radio reception in the store, which is maddening in a crisis.  We, along with other merchants and neighbors, stood outside in disbelief and exchanged updates, getting whatever info we could from those who still had TV reception.  That’s how we learned the Pentagon was hit and America was under attack.

To say it was the single most frightening day of our lives would be to understate the panic that enveloped us all here in New York that morning.  I thought about all my customers and people I knew who worked down there.  I thought of the few times in my life when I worked in lower Manhattan.  Was I ever grateful that I didn’t work there anymore! 

My mother and I decided that we should gather the family together and just be close and watch and see.  We didn’t know what the rest of the day would bring, only that we needed to be together.  Gary and I hugged and said we would see each other tomorrow.  Being the dark humorist that he his, Gary added, “If there is a tomorrow!”  I slugged him in the arm and called him a jackass.  “Of course I’ll see you tomorrow!”  No one knew what the rest of the day would bring and tomorrow was a very long way off.

By the time we got into the car, the south tower of the World Trade Center had already collapsed.  The streets of Brooklyn were chaotic and difficult to navigate, as parents scrambled to collect their children from schools, people darted everywhere and the air was filled with brown smoke while papers danced crazily overhead.  A trip that should have normally taken only 20 minutes turned into a two hour adventure. 

When we finally made it to my brother’s house in Marine Park, my sister-in-law was doing a fairly good job of hiding her panic from my nephew, who was just three month’s shy of his second birthday and a keen observer of everything.  He took my hand and showed me the picture on the TV, explaining to me how “there was a really, really big fire!”  I just managed to turn his face away in time for him to miss the second tower collapsing.  I couldn’t look away but wanted so badly to run backwards through time, back to when I was a child and my grandmother worked for the NY State Liquor Authority in tower one of the World Trade Center. 

Grandma sometimes took my brother and me to work with her when we had a day off from school. She had seniority and no one in her office ever complained about us being there.  Besides, there were plenty of ways for us kids to be out of the way.  One of our favorite activities was to draw silly pictures and drop them down the mail chute in the hallway next to the elevator bank.  Ah, such carefree days, roaming the halls of the World Trade Center.  Who knew an office building could be so full of wonder!  I don’t remember too much about the observation deck, as the one time Grandma took us up there, my brother got a terrible nosebleed. We turned right around and went back down immediately.  I do remember watching a ticker-tape parade or two from the giant window in Grandma’s boss’s office, including the parade for the 53 hostages who were released from Iran in 1981. Luckily, Grandma’s boss was such a nice old man and didn’t mind sharing his view with us. 

Meanwhile, in Queens, NY on the afternoon of September 11^th, 2001, our cousin lost her long battle with breast cancer.  Somehow word had gotten out to the whole family, despite the fact that no one’s cell phone was working that day. It was very, very sad news.  My mother was very close to her, one of her very few true close friends.  I was so sad for my mom and sad for our cousin’s children who were just growing into adulthood and would miss their mom in so many ways.  Still, the day would be so much worse for so many others.

My sister-in-law was quick to shove a Veggie Tales tape into the VCR, so our sweet little boy wouldn’t have any nightmares that night.  Content in front of the TV, I left my nephew and stepped out onto the stoop for a cry and a cigarette.  It was the first of many solemn reflections I would have that day.  By late afternoon, I began to see bits of paper with burned edges flying overhead and I remember thinking that those papers had once been on someone’s desk in the World Trade Center.  I prayed for the occupants of those desks where those papers had once been.  Prayed that they made it out in time.  I remember seeing Air Force jets flying overhead. That really chilled me to the core, as I couldn’t imagine what sort of mission they were flying into.  I prayed for them, too.

In the early evening, we decided it was okay enough for us to part company.  My mom went home to my dad, who had worked a full day in spite of all the events, and I went home to my apartment.  I had left the windows open that morning.  As I stared in disbelief at the footage on CNN, I began to smell the acrid smoke of burning metal, wood, paper and electrical stuff.  I turned on the light and looked out my bedroom window to realize the wind was blowing the remnants of carnage right into my apartment.  The smoke was brown and I didn’t want to think about what else it contained.  The morbidity of it all was far too great for me grasp with any sanity.  And I cried and cried and cried. 

In the days that followed, we could see the smoking wreckage from the walking path in Bay Ridge, down by Shore Road.  And you could smell it, too.  I’ll never forget that smell.  But what haunted me so for months and months after was the thought of those poor people who were stranded above the where the planes had struck, making their final decisions to either jump or burn alive.  What choice is that to have to make?  The footage of them jumping singly or in pairs holding hands is so deeply etched in my memory that even now as I sit here and write it all out, I cry for them with fresh tears all over again, while in the other room their names are being read aloud by their loved ones.  It would be another year before I could even look at a firefighter without tearing up.

Some time has passed, but these wounds will never heal.   Not for the families of the victims and not for the rest of us who now live in such a drastically different world than the one that existed on September 10^th, 2001.  I will mourn for that world every day for the rest of my life.