story1071.xml

story1071.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

The alarm clock went off at 6 a.m. local time, and I lay in bed, not quite awake, listening for the familiar music. There was a man speaking in a somber tone, and I didn't really pay attention until I heard something about the twin towers and a plane. My eyes opened, and I heard him say a plane had struck the tower. I remember thinking I had mistaken what he said, or that per usual some idiot here in Phoenix got the story wrong. I turned on the TV, and tuned in CNN. To my horror I realized the guy on the radio was not misinformed, it was real. I sat frozen in the bed, staring at the black plume rising from the tower. I am from the New York area, having been raised in northern NJ and visiting the city as a child about once a month. On July 4, 1986, I was atop the twin towers, an excited 17 year old girl waiting to see the fantastic fireworks as the Lady turned 100.
I watched the smoke, remembering that day in 1986, and couldn't believe what I was seeing. What idiot had flown into the tower? How could you not see it? Why not crash land into the river? These thoughts raced through my mind, and I was pondering the fate of the pilot and airline responsible when the second plane hit.
My mind stopped immediately. Absolutely no thoughts came. The world stopped. I swear the air in the room froze, as if every atom in the universe had suddenly ceased to move, if only for that one second. I couldn't breathe. I wanted to scream and throw up all at once. "Oh My God!" filled my mind. Several other words sprang in too, but I will not mention them as children may some day read this. I knew this was no freak accident. We were being attacked.
I grabbed the phone and called my father's house in Boston. Somewhere in the chatter I had heard the plane was from Boston, and my father travels extensively. My stepmother answered the phone, and I blurted "Where's Dad?". Nice. No hello, no how are you, just where's Dad? "At work" she said, and a bit of the panic released me. "Is he on the ground?" I asked, and she said "Yeah, why?" I was stunned that she didn't know. I was 3000 miles away, and I knew. But I guess I wasn't working at the time. I told her to turn on CNN and that 2 planes had flown into the Twin Towers, and one was from Boston. We hung up shortly afterward, I honestly don't remember what else we said. I just knew my Dad was on the ground.
I couldn't take my eyes from the images on the TV screen, not even to leave the bedroom and go to the widescreen in the living room. I watched in horror as people jumped, I think I would have thrown up right then had I not been so stuck, so utterly paralyzed by the events playing out before me. I remember wanting to get my kids and bring them into the bed with me, to hold them tightly to me and never let go, but not wanting them to see this. My daughter had turned 5 the day before, and with the sadness only a mother can know I realized her world was forever changed. I knew mine was too, but for my children; 5 and 4, it was the worst wisdom I never dreamed I would know.
Somehow, it was about 8 a.m., and I was to have her to kindergarten at 8:15. Having already decided to keep my 4 year old son home from preschool, I was torn about sending her. Preschool is really no big deal educationally, but kindergarten is the real deal. I wanted nothing more than to hold them both close, but an anger rose in me. By now the Pentagon had been struck, and the plane in Pennsylvania had also gone down. I was furious. How dare these bastards attack civilians, using the innocent for their cause! If you have a beef with the U.S., fine, attack a military target. I know it sounds awful, but that to me was fair game. Military people are trained for such events, well sort of, I don't think anyone was really trained for such an attack. But still, they are the arm of the U.S., the fighters. I could actually deal with the Pentagon better than the WTC. The Pentagon casualties, by the way, have been somewhat overlooked in my opinion, perhaps because it was a military target and as such a little less horrifying for the public, but not so for the families of those servicepeople.
I finally decided to send my daughter to school. Somehow, through it all, I felt that if I was too afraid to send her to kindergarten, that they had already won. It may seem to some that I was playing favorites; keeping my son home but sending her off to school, but I wasn't really. By the time I was sending her to school, he only had 30 minutes left of his preschool session. So it really was more of a "why bother" with him.
When the first tower fell, the tears welled in my eyes. I remember them streaming down my face, and my son asking what was wrong. They had never seen me cry. I searched for the way to tell him...after all he is 4 and this was a complicated and terrible thing I had to tell him. I simply said that some bad men crashed planes into some buildings and a lot of people died. What else do you tell a 4 and 5 year old? After the first one went down, there was the waiting game...would the second go to? As we all know, the sad answer was yes.
My aunt lives in Manhattan, and I thought of her. I knew she was far enough away that she wasn't involved, but I thought about how terrified she must be, how alone she must feel. I wanted to call, but was sure the phone lines were jammed, and I didn't want to tie up a line the rescuers might need. I waited until the evening, by then my mother had heard from her and relayed the information to the rest of us. She was scared but unhurt, almost deafened by the sirens that raced past her window all day. I have often wondered if she has written anything about that day, I would love to read it, but I feel that is her stuff, and if she wanted us to know anything about her experiences, she will tell us if and when she is ready.
Where I grew up in NJ(I am actually a New Yorker, my birth certificate says Bronx, NY although we moved before I was one)there is a road called Skyline Drive. It goes over a mountain, and on clear days, the skyline of NYC was quite visible. I remember 15 years of going over that mountain, always looking for it, because New York was where it all happened. How many dreams I had of the city, of my future there. How many adventures I had in the shadow of the WTC, skipping school with my friends and hopping the bus into the city, exploring the streets and drinking underage. Now, it lay in ruin; the black smoke replaced by the gray veil of dust. My heart broke, the pain and sorrow matched by my rage. Surprisingly, I did not fear anything happening here, even though Phoenix is a large city, we are in a state that has no real target other than a nuclear power plant and the Hoover Dam. I could see the reasons for the targets, they were symbols to the country. Arizona has no major symbols, and crashing a plane into the Grand Canyon really wouldn't do much; it's already a big hole in the ground.
There are certain images in my memory I don't think even Alzheimer's can remove. People jumping from the towers, the flames at the Pentagon, the masses of people running away while the firefighters and cops and whoever else ran in. The loneliness of the medical personnel waiting for the casualties that never arrived. That was the scariest I think, there were no injured really. Only the dead. The ironworkers running to the site to help with the rescue effort, through the gray cloud that had decended on the streets. The way everything looked in that haze...like the moon had dropped a ton of it's surface on lower Manhattan. The flag raised by the firefighters. The look on President Bush's face, a mix of horror and fury. His eyes were amazing, the pain in them, the compassion, but underlying the coldness of a man determined to find justice. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britian, simply but powerfully stating that whatever we needed, we had from his country.
I watched all day, and the next weeks to follow. I remember feeling a bit numb, shell-shocked if you will. I think we all did. I never did give blood. There was no need. The injured were minimal, it was the dead that was overwhelming. I recall the gestures from the nations of the world, the good gestures. The American national anthem being played at the gates of Buckingham Palace. The tons of flowers placed at our embassies in Germany, Russia and countless other countries. I also remember that bad...the celebrations in the streets in some Arab countries. The bin Laden home video of his jubilation at the success of the attacks. The smug look on Saddam Hussein's face, though he wisely said nothing inflamatory at the time. I think we'd have bombed him into oblivion if he had.
America is an incredible country. As we delved into a type of warfare no one had ever seen before, it was amazing to see how we reacted. We screamed for vengence against our enemy, now identified as al Qaeda, and we cried for the starving children of Afghanistan. We bombed the mountains, and dropped food to the people. Our children raised millions to feed their children, our women protested the treatment of their women, and we came together in a way not seen since WWII. Flags were impossible to find, red, white and blue was everywhere, and people said hello to their neighbors, some for the first time.
My children stopped asking me about what happened. I guess they understood as much as they could, on the terms they could understand. Until July, 2002.
Every year, I return to Boston in July, to visit family and escape the desert heat for a few weeks. My "mission" on these trips is usually centered around fishing, and although I did fish this past trip, that was not my number one agenda. I had to go to Ground Zero as it is now called. It was not a question, I simply had to go.
It was the third week of July when I got to New York, visiting family in NJ. I made the trip with my son. My daughter decided not to go in to see "the big hole where the buildings once stood" as I explained it to them, but my 4 year old wanted to go with me. We drove in across the George Washington Bridge from interstate 80. When I first glimpsed the skyline through the trees, and saw the empty area where the towers had once proudly stood, my eyes filled. It was real. It had happened. They were gone.
I blinked the tears away and continued across the bridge, driving down the Hudson to what I knew was going to be awful. We rounded the curve and I saw the netting on the buildings still standing but damaged. The netting was to prevent debris from falling out onto the street. Every building had it. It looked like funeral veils.
The emptiness of what had been the plaza was enormous. As if someone had removed the nose from a face and left it empty; it was that pronounced. There was no doubt that a central feature was missing. I started to cry, right there in the highway. My son asked if I was crying, to which I sniffed, " A little". A man in a car next to me was looking at me. New Yorkers have the reputation of being hard, callus people. Not this driver. His eyes were full of compassion, and he nodded ever so slightly, as if to express understanding of my feelings. He knew. He knew too well what I was feeling.
We parked a block away and walked to the site. My son's little hand held tightly to mine, and although he was excited to be in such a big city, with large intersections and tall buildings, he seemed to sense that this was a solemn time. Maybe he picked up the vibes from me, or maybe he just knew. He's a sensitive little boy.
We followed the people. It wasn't a mad crowd, just a steady stream of pedestrians all headed in one direction. The city was quiet. Having been here many times, I was surprised at how subdued the noise seemed. Hardly any horns blaring like they always used to. It seems the city knows this is a sad place too.
We walked up the street, passing the vendors with the FDNY T-shirts and other things. When we turned the corner to where the towers should have been, my body stopped. My heart stopped. My lungs stopped. The only thing still working were my tear ducts. I picked my son up and held him to me, and we finished the last 100 feet in silence.
When you step out to the viewing area, the openness is what strikes you. It's not supposed to be. It should be jammed with people and buildings, just like the rest of the city. But it's just open air. There is nothing there. Nothing.
We approached the edge, where the crater is. All I could say was "oh my God" over and over again. I must have sounded like a babbling idiot, but those were the only words I could find. I had seen the CNN updates for 9 months now, I knew what the hole looked like, but I was not prepared. The vastness of it. How empty it was. I held tight to my boy and sobbed into his shoulder. He simply hugged my neck and lightly patted my shoulder with his fingers. I thank God he was there. I cried hard for several minutes, looking into that empty ground. I couldn't speak, my voice had left me. All I had was my grief. First it filled me, then it flooded out in my tears.
When at last I had regained myself, we walked down a bit further. My son asked me where the big hole was. At first, I didn't understand, but he asked me again, and then asked if it was down by the trucks. Then I understood. He was looking for a hole, like he would dig in the back yard. I told him that the trucks and cranes were IN the hole, that's how big it was. He looked at the hole again with new understanding, and quietly said "Oh." I think that's when he got it; how massive this area was. I think he was surprised, and although he is only 4, I think he really did understand. Then he asked me why all the grown ups were crying. I told him it was a sad place where a lot of people died. He asked about the bad men and the planes, and if they were all dead. I told him the ones in the planes were all dead. Then he asked me if there were any more bad men. I choked back the tears and said "Yes." It broke my heart to tell him that. It killed me that I had to tell my 4 year old that the world was not a safe place anymore. It hurt to say it. And then I got angry.
I looked out to the river, and realized that's where they came in from. It was a fury in me: I wanted heads on a platter. I wanted to rip the heads from the bodies they perched upon. I wanted their blood, and I would accept it on my hands. I wanted vengence.
After a moment, I looked back down into the hole. The sadness returned, replacing the hot rage with the loss. So many gone. Needless victims of some madmen with a cause. The tragedy washed over me, soothing my wounds with a peace. It sounds strange, but that's what I felt. Peace. As if every one of those 3,000 people were standing with me, understanding my hurt and anger and fear and frustration. My guilt and horror. My helplessness. And it was OK. I could feel all that at once. It was OK to feel all of it.
When we left, I felt lighter somehow. I remember how clean the bottom of the hole was, as if the workers there had swept it, understanding that this was hallowed ground. And it is. It is the grave of almost 3,000 men, women and children. It needs to remain sacred to us. I know something else will be built there, but there must be a place for them. I remember the cross, it's still there. The one from the I-beams, formed when the towers fell. It still has the black swag over it, though now somewhat faded to a charcoal gray. It's still there, and I think it should stay.
So, where does that leave me? Wiser than before, sadder than before. I think the price of wisdom is some sadness, for the knowledge we gain is hardly ever without cost to either ourselves or others. But I am more hopeful as well. I see my children, all children. They have lost the "safety" we once knew in this country. But they have gained some things as well. Knowledge of this nation's unity in our diversity. That is what makes us so strong. We are the mutts of the world, a mix of everything, and mutts are the most durable animals. We have a long road ahead of us, this war will take us to places we have never imagined, and we will see horrible things. But we will also do so much good. Think back to the children feeding the children. When that much compassion is present, how can the world really be such a bad place? The children will teach us the most, if we only stop to listen. They are the ones faced with this future. Let's help them make it a good one. Compassion, love, caring about others. Let's take these lessons from the horrors of September 11th. It's easy to hold the anger and hatred. Let's take the harder road of hope.