nmah4293.xml

nmah4293.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I lived in Brooklyn, New York with my family on the 11th of last year. We heard the 2nd explosion and felt our house tremble. Bits of paper and debris landed in our yard, a good 2 or 3 miles from the site. We lost members of our community, a close-knit one of cops and firefighters. My son, who had just started school the week before, had a boy in his class whose father died; he was one of 10 kids. We felt helpless. We donated socks, t-shirts, sweatpants, boots, underwear and food to our local firehouse, which lost a captain. We smelled smoke and our eyes stung whenever the wind shifted in our direction. At times we couldn't leave our house because of the smoke. We tried to lead normal lives for our children but we wondered if there would be a tomorrow, if war would break out and if we'd live to see our children grown. We PRAYED for the families and cried over posters and pictures plastered all over downtown, at a hospital even a month later. But one of my worst experiences of the day was when I realized that a young man who was trapped in Tower 2, but who had managed to call one of the television stations to get word to his family, did not survive, could not have survived as the Tower fell just minutes after his plea for help. I searched for his name among the missing, finally seeing it in the New York Times. I felt such pain for this man's family, a man I had never met or even seen, but who I felt such a connection to. His voice haunts me still.

We were in the process of selling our Brooklyn home and were, somewhat selfishly, worried if everything would move ahead. We had no idea where our buyers worked -- our lawyer was trapped overseas on vacation. We thought briefly of backing out of both selling and buying a house in upstate New York, but decided we had chosen to move for the good of our children. We have since moved and are dealing with different issues -- much more mundane ones.

That New York is an amazing place, attracting amazing people to it. And that New York is ever evolving and growing and that this too shall pass.

I didn't own a flag until we moved out of Brooklyn. I bought one soon after we moved into our new house and put it on the front porch. Flags are ubiquitous in upstate New York, but it makes me feel part of my new community to fly it.