story20652.xml
Title
story20652.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2006-09-11
911DA Story: Story
This was my blog post yesterday. It's hard to believe it's been five years. http://shirakozak.blog.com
My story of friendship found on 9/11 can be read in the 2004 Seal Press anthology, Secrets and Confidences: the complicated truth about women's friendships.
----------------------
"The beautiful days are hard..." -Diane Horning, Co-founder, WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc.
I understand what Diane means. That those warm, calm days in mid-September in New York City bring back memories, thoughts, images of a day some part of us wishes we could forget.
Five years. It's been five years but even as time passes the images, the feelings remain with me, though a little tarnished, a little more vague as distance from September 11th grows. This year, today, I feel ravaged, and lost. My feelings with each anniversary have been vastly different. Immense sadness; hopeful; enraged; fearful; adrift. I didn't know anyone who died that day. Instead, amidst the turmoil, the sirens, the fear that death was imminent, God sent me comfort in the form of a new friend, Michelle R.
We were incredibly lucky, Michelle and I, if one believes in luck. My Rector Street building across from Trinity Church shielded us from the Trade Center plaza, and so kept us one large step from most of the horrors of the day. But I had seen the piece of airplane logo fly past my window, on fire, had felt and experienced the resounding boom of flight 11 striking the first tower. Today that sound lives somewhere in my memory, hidden in corners of my psyche, elusive.
Co-workers of mine, as did others when they heard the news, went in search of the plane turbine that had landed somewhere in the park, but came back grim-faced at the trauma of seeing bodies and remains along the West Side Highway where they'd been flung. J, K, & M had been walking along when the second plane flew directly over their heads and into the second tower. One man described to me, 'the streets slick with blood'. Another, the vision of a body strapped into an airplane seat, decapitated. There were horrors, real horrors silently borne by witnesses to the unimaginable, secrets shared only through quick glances, eyes meeting eyes and seeing into the soul.
Returning to work later in the fall was experienced as an anchor, a gift and a terrible burden; desperate people, all of us, with desperate feelings and visions we couldn't shake. Risk management, our jobs. Getting up every morning to the smell of smoke, the sting of ash, our mission. Just one more subway ride, one bagel and coffee, heads down running past the Missing flyers and firefighter memorials. Just one more day, and then we'll be okay.
Okay never comes. September 11th lives in our cellular memory; in the whine of an airplane overhead. in the films of previous decades where the Twin Towers stand forever straight, unharmed, magnificent. in fall leaves, that moment in September juuuust before the weather changes, stays a hint too warm, as though the world, as though Time stands still in a breathless hush, just one moment longer.
Many years ago (the 1990's), when I lived in San Francisco, I had a terrible nightmare from which I awoke, heart pounding, sweating though the room was cool. In this dream I lived in New York, was in an immense building that stood right on the shore. I watched, paralyzed, from a top floor as an enormous tidal wave grew and grew and grew until it hit the building, hit the windows from which I watched with long watery fingers, clutching grasping at what lay within. I've never forgotten that dream; now, I don't think I could.
Today, September 10, my heart will mourn. Tomorrow I will put away sadness at a day I cannot change and celebrate my son's eighth birthday. I'll try to keep the sadness from my voice, will smile and laugh, just for him, as I've done every year since 2001. But when the day is through, and the party hats have been put away and memories catalogued, I'll take a few minutes to remember, one more time, who I was then. And how very different we all are, today.
My story of friendship found on 9/11 can be read in the 2004 Seal Press anthology, Secrets and Confidences: the complicated truth about women's friendships.
----------------------
"The beautiful days are hard..." -Diane Horning, Co-founder, WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc.
I understand what Diane means. That those warm, calm days in mid-September in New York City bring back memories, thoughts, images of a day some part of us wishes we could forget.
Five years. It's been five years but even as time passes the images, the feelings remain with me, though a little tarnished, a little more vague as distance from September 11th grows. This year, today, I feel ravaged, and lost. My feelings with each anniversary have been vastly different. Immense sadness; hopeful; enraged; fearful; adrift. I didn't know anyone who died that day. Instead, amidst the turmoil, the sirens, the fear that death was imminent, God sent me comfort in the form of a new friend, Michelle R.
We were incredibly lucky, Michelle and I, if one believes in luck. My Rector Street building across from Trinity Church shielded us from the Trade Center plaza, and so kept us one large step from most of the horrors of the day. But I had seen the piece of airplane logo fly past my window, on fire, had felt and experienced the resounding boom of flight 11 striking the first tower. Today that sound lives somewhere in my memory, hidden in corners of my psyche, elusive.
Co-workers of mine, as did others when they heard the news, went in search of the plane turbine that had landed somewhere in the park, but came back grim-faced at the trauma of seeing bodies and remains along the West Side Highway where they'd been flung. J, K, & M had been walking along when the second plane flew directly over their heads and into the second tower. One man described to me, 'the streets slick with blood'. Another, the vision of a body strapped into an airplane seat, decapitated. There were horrors, real horrors silently borne by witnesses to the unimaginable, secrets shared only through quick glances, eyes meeting eyes and seeing into the soul.
Returning to work later in the fall was experienced as an anchor, a gift and a terrible burden; desperate people, all of us, with desperate feelings and visions we couldn't shake. Risk management, our jobs. Getting up every morning to the smell of smoke, the sting of ash, our mission. Just one more subway ride, one bagel and coffee, heads down running past the Missing flyers and firefighter memorials. Just one more day, and then we'll be okay.
Okay never comes. September 11th lives in our cellular memory; in the whine of an airplane overhead. in the films of previous decades where the Twin Towers stand forever straight, unharmed, magnificent. in fall leaves, that moment in September juuuust before the weather changes, stays a hint too warm, as though the world, as though Time stands still in a breathless hush, just one moment longer.
Many years ago (the 1990's), when I lived in San Francisco, I had a terrible nightmare from which I awoke, heart pounding, sweating though the room was cool. In this dream I lived in New York, was in an immense building that stood right on the shore. I watched, paralyzed, from a top floor as an enormous tidal wave grew and grew and grew until it hit the building, hit the windows from which I watched with long watery fingers, clutching grasping at what lay within. I've never forgotten that dream; now, I don't think I could.
Today, September 10, my heart will mourn. Tomorrow I will put away sadness at a day I cannot change and celebrate my son's eighth birthday. I'll try to keep the sadness from my voice, will smile and laugh, just for him, as I've done every year since 2001. But when the day is through, and the party hats have been put away and memories catalogued, I'll take a few minutes to remember, one more time, who I was then. And how very different we all are, today.
Collection
Citation
“story20652.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 9, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/12897.