September 11, 2011
. . . and I could find plenty to say, but I think I need to learn to sit with the silence.
Here’s what I’ve said about this day in recent years.
This year I didn’t do Project 2996, either . . . maybe next year. There are so many stories yet to be told. For now, though, I will engage in a wordless tribute.
September 11, 2010
I feel like I have to mark this day somehow, as I have for the past several years . . .
I feel so connected to this day on such a personal, visceral level . . .I worked in lower Manhattan for several years; I was working at a shoe store two blocks away on the day of the first WTC bombing in 1993. Knowing what I saw that day, and then trying to translate my own experience to the magnitude of this second attack, I feel like somehow I “get it”; I tell myself that I am not just one of those people who is appropriating someone else’s grief for my own purposes.
but the more I hear about what some of the people I know went through on that day, the more I start to believe that I am really just a fraud after all . . .
I know the rhetoric–that this day happened to “us” as a nation, and particularly to “us”, my beloved hometown of NYC. But if I am to be honest to myself, it didn’t happen to *me*. Not in the way that it would have happened “to me” had I still been in the city at that time . . . not in the way that it happened to these people I know, people for whom those streets were not merely recent memories viewed from a distance, and for whom the events of that day cannot be shut off from their consciousness simply by changing the channel on their TV set.
Had I been there, had my feet walked those streets and my lungs breathed that death-filled air, I would not now be capable of watching those events reenacted, moment by painful moment, as I did today and have done for the last several years. I would not be capable of sitting in front of The History Channel until I am too sick to my stomach to watch anymore. If I had lived it, I would not be merely trying to imagine the tastes and smells and sounds of that day, because they would have been indelibly seared into my brain, far beyond the reach of any psychic “off” switch.
Those of you who have lived it, and survive it still, are as much heroes to me on this day as those who lost their lives nine years ago, and it is a privilege to be able to honor your journey.
September 11, 2009
(I am participating in Project 2996. Follow the link to find other stories, or to help out with a tribute.)
It is right that we remember those who lost their lives on this day. Their death has had a huge impact on so many of us. But when I heard about this project, I felt strongly compelled to write about the “other” victims–better labelled as “survivors” . . . because they outnumber those we’ve lost, and yet we seem to sometimes forget about the ones that still live in the shadow of that day.
A friend of mine has posted several reflections on his experiences on and after that day. You can find his story here. I should warn you that it is NOT light reading, but maybe after reading it, you will better understand my frustration with those who seek to appropriate this day, with patriotic song-fests instead of solemn vigils, and with no-clue tourists who see “Ground Zero” as just another site on their list of ”things to do in NYC”.
(I know, I know . . . not every person who didn’t live in close proximity to NYC, DC, or PA on that day deserves the “no-clue tourists” label–but there are some that do, and it is in large part for those people that I am writing this post.)
My friend Ken’s story is just one of thousands upon thousands. I have other friends whose lives were profoundly shaken by what they witnessed on that day, and know others still who waited in vain for someone (or several someones, or MANY someones) they loved to come home.
If *I* (and I consider myself “lucky” to have experienced relatively few losses on that day) wince at commercials for a movie that “opens September 11th!”, and shy away from hosting a Tupperware party on this date because somehow that level of enthusiasm seemed horribly disrespectful to me (let alone the people in 2005 who chose that as their WEDDING date), then what do these reminders, myriad and subtle, do to someone who lost loved ones on this day eight years ago?
What does it feel like to those who walked down 84 or 52 or 12 or 112 flights of stairs and whose lives were spared, to those who made their way home through clouds of smoke and stench, or who watched, helpless and numb, from across the river as the towers fell?
Or what does it feel like to be the main character in one of those wonderful-yet-horrible stories of ”fate/luck” survival . . . like the friend-of-a-friend who overslept and was late to his job (at Cantor Fitzgerald) because he had attended a Michael Jackson concert the night before?
Or what is this day like for those who are watching their family members and fellow employees who are succumbing to illnesses that are clearly related to their rescue work at the site? How do they feel about people coming and gawking at the empty hole where their own lives started to end?
Yes, I am willing to acknowledge that we were all changed on that day, but for some, this day is only sad in the way a celebrity’s death is sad . . . when you hear it on the news, you feel that sadness for a moment, but then you move on. For others, though, it is embedded deep within them, as if the smells and sights and sounds of that day have been embedded into their psyche.
It is these survivors that I want to pay tribute to today.
Yes, life goes on, and I don’t mean to suggest that we should curl up in a ball and stop living . . . those who have survived that day certainly haven’t done that, though they would have every reason to.
I just ask that we remember those whose hearts are raw today in a way that those of us who haven’t lived it can’t understand, and that those of us who are hundreds or thousands of miles away from the eye of this storm stop to remember and to reflect upon the damage that this storm left in its wake.
To do so is to honor the memory of those who live on, as well as those who were lost on this day.
September 11, 2008
. . . and I suppose this is hypocritical, since it’s true that I was not living in NY at the time . . . but nevertheless, I am perpetually frustrated that people who have no personal connection to this day insist on appropriating it anyway . . .
some don’t agree with me, but I can’t help it. It still makes me angry.
In the meantime, I’ll promise not to come to your hometown and show up at your most holy, sacred places of mourning in shorts and sunglasses, taking pictures and pretending that your tragedy belongs to me when it REALLY DOESN’T, if you agree to show the people of New York the same respect. Thank you.
September 11, 2007
1) answering the obligatory question ”where were you when you heard?” . . . I was sleeping (I was working second shift at the time) and my friend Tannel called me at about 9:30 and left a message telling me that I needed to wake up and turn on the TV because “something’s going on in NY with the World Trade Center”
2) watching TV while on the phone with Max. When the firs tower collapsed, I remember saying, “It just fell” and his disbelieving, “No, it didn’t . . . ” The idea of it falling down was so inconceivable to him (to most of us, I think.)
3) walking out of my apartment to go to work a little while later and feeling almost bombarded by the brightness of the sun. It was a perfect fall day here in Grand Rapids, just as it was in New York, and it felt so utterly incongruous . . .
4) talking to my (now deceased) ex-roommate, George, via e-mail after a bit of an impasse (we were on less-than-stellar terms when I left NY at the end of 1999) . . . on one level, it was good to talk to him, but on another level, it was annoying to hear his posturing about how Arden (our Gap district manager and my former boss–the store in the WTC was in her district) was confiding in him all the time. “Arden has kept a strong face publicly but in private has expressed her devastation to me” (sure, that may not sound to you like posturing, but trust me on this. I knew him well, and in the land of Gap assistant managers, it was all about the competition . . . )
5) hearing that Arden moved to the Philadelphia area a few years later, purportedly to have more of a chance for advancement. When I tell friends that I think she was traumatized by September 11th and that this contributed to her need for a change of venue, they don’t agree with me. But hey, I’m the one with the undergrad degree in psychology! (would you like fries with that?)
6) not knowing what to think about the words of Revelation 18.
7) hitting a point at work (after everybody seemed to want to come to me to “talk about it” all the time, I guess because I had that NYC connection) where I had to say, “I CAN’T HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ANYMORE!” A few people expressed surprise at my reaction; I can’t remember who it was that said, “It’s okay if she doesn’t feel like talking about it”, but that person was a hero to me in that moment.
8. remembering all of the shopping I did in the WTC concourse. When I was home visiting just ten days prior to the attacks, I had purchased a Barbie doll for my friend’s daughter in the Warner Brothers store there. I also ate a donut at Krispy Kreme and a hot dog from a vendor in front of 7 WTC.
9) realizing that I’m lucky in the scheme of things, and yet I still try to reach for a connection. One such connection is that the guy on the right in that well-known picture that became a stamp is the brother of another guy that I went to elementary school with.
10) going back to New York for the first time in January of 2002 for my grandmother’s funeral. As I was driving in New Jersey along the Turnpike, I started to freak out because I couldn’t orient myself . . . there was this huge hole in the skyline and without those two buildings that were supposed to be there as a demarcation point, I was engulfed by a huge sense of loss and panic.
11) hearing these lyrics to a Julie Miller song . . . I think the song was written before 2001, but the second verse seems like it was written just for that day . . .
I`m making flowers out of paper
while darkness takes the afternoon
I know that they won`t last forever
but real ones fade away too soon
(chorus)
I still cry sometimes when I remember you
I still cry sometimes when I hear your name
I said goodbye and I know you`re all right now
but when the leaves start falling down I still cry
It`s just that I recall September
It`s just that I still hear your song
It`s just I can`t seem to remember
forever more those days are gone
