story671.xml

story671.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-26

I am a New Yorker. I grew up in the suburbs, and have lived downtown for the last 21 years. People have often asked me why I don't move away. Isn't hard, they say. Don't you want to spread out, have a lawn? Well, no. I love this dirty city, if I may borrow the line. It practically breaths for me.
So where am I when my city is attacked? In the last place I would ever chose to be. EVER. Vegas. Let me explain.
I am a pastry chef and my best friend Marilyn, who lives in Houston, is also. There was a big bakery trade show in Vegas and we thought it would be fun to meet there, do some business, have some stupid fun. I could visit my aunt who lives there too.
So all is going well. Then Tuesday morning I wake around 7 am which is 10 am in NYC. I am not a morning person, but for some reason, I can't sleep anymore. I turn on the TV. I see some building on fire. Hmmm, that's the Trade Center...what movie is this? Who wants to see Bruce Willis kill the bad guys this early in the morning? So, I switch channels and it's still there. On every channel. And then tower 2 is going down. And then I realize...I get on the phone, shaking, and call Marilyn's room down the hall and scream at her to turn on the tv.
And it begins. The horror, the disbelief, the struggle to understand. Trying to think of who I know who works/lives down there. The people in the Windows on the World restaurant...Trying to call everyone, anyone, but no one because there was no getting through to NY. And then the torture of trying to get home. We were supposed to leave the next day and it was clear that was not going to happen. But at that point we had no idea the extent that this tragedy would affect all lives across the country. All the things that we take for granted, like being able to make a phone call, or getting a reservation on a plane, a train, a bus. It all came to a standstill. All the cars were rented. As a matter of fact, people were BUYING cars just to get out of there. But most people there were from the West coast, so it was fairly easy to escape. You couldn't even get past the Hoover Dam to go in the other direction. I was going nowhere.
People were telling me how glad they were for me that I was not home. But I was not glad. The only place I wanted to be was home. I felt guilty. Not that I could do anything, but this overwhelming feeling that I was SO not where I was supposed to be was actually painful. And I am not in Boston, say, or Wyoming. I AM IN LAS VEGAS. I am not a gambler, and everything else closed down. No shopping, no shows, no movies, no attractions, only--you guessed it--the casinos. There had to be SOME distractions, I guess. So, in between my zillions of pleading phone calls to airlines--one day the airports are open, the next minute they are closed--we tried not to be angry. We tried to distract ourselves. We ate a lot of Krispy Cremes. We found little triumphs: $30 in quarters falling out of the I Dream of Jeannie slot machine; finally getting out one phone call to nyc to arrange for someone else to make the Bar Mitvah cake for that Saturday's party (which did go on as scheduled); finally, after begging every reservationist I could talk to to just get me anywhere on the east coast, a flight to Miami on Friday.
The airport was madness. Thousands of people on long snaking lines, 2 hours just to get to the door of the terminal. Not a person complaining (except for one German guy who seemed to be not from another country, but possibly, another planet), amazing coordination by the airport staff under such unforseeable circumstances. What humaness we are capable of when pressed. We all wondered if any of this benevolence would last.
In Florida, I have family, friends. Seeing my beautiful nieces in the airport, I almost lost it. My heart was breaking, and they made me smile. I stayed there a week, healed a little, and came home. I didn't look out the window of the plane. I knew the hole was there.