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2001-09-21 - 3:25 a.m. A picture. High up from atop the tallest building in the city. This was the last image that over 6,000 people had. Of an awakening city, already buzzing on an innocent Tuesday morning—some returning to work as usual, some returning to school in this, their first full week of classes, some continuing their dream vacation to the busiest city in the world. Looking out the window, or from the top floor deck, the city lay before them, silver and gray structures breaking through the flawless blue sky resembling a brain wave pattern. Then, an interruption in the bright blue landscape—a small dot. Slowly, the dot grew bigger, as if a marker had been left uncapped in the atmosphere, and the ink was leaking onto the page, growing in size as it clung to each paper fiber. It grew from an amorphous shape into what appeared to be a featherless bird. Suddenly that unfinished email, phone call, spreadsheet or morning meeting wasn’t as important as the sleek bullet growing above the horizon. That view will never be the same. The peace found in daydreaming over a city just waking up was taken away in an instant. I never really like the WTC buildings. They reminded (reminded—still can’t digest using that verb tense in this context) me of these sculptures my parents had displayed in our living room – metal boxy sharp lines, too vertical, hard to look at. I didn’t like the harsh lines, and uniformity of the buildings. And because of the business that I knew (or assumed) was conducted there, I have long since dismissed the buildings as being almost a full definition of conformity. Strict conservative business conducted in uniform, faceless buildings—unappealing to me on all levels. After they crumbled, I was quickly shocked into reality. Each story of the missing people who lived inside carved one more ornate edge, one more detail into those buildings. Their collapse taught my generation what fear is. My grandmother grew up in fear. My generation was blessed with a fear-free life until September 11, 2001. I have finally been able to understand what my grandmother felt as a child during WWI or as an adult with four children when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I feel closer to her now more than ever, and I find some comfort in that. I now know what it feels like to have your life forced to stand still in fear. I know what it’s like to feel pain for people I’ve never met. We (my generation) have lived through war, we have read about tragedies happening around the world during our lifetime, but until now these events really meant nothing to me. I was always briefly saddened by hearing the news of these events—from natural disasters to the Oklahoma bombing—but I never cried for those people. I don’t honestly know what reaction I would have had if these attacks had occurred with the same death toll somewhere other than my island. I admittedly change the channel if the news coverage begins to discuss the event at the Pentagon. I only care about my island, my neighborhood. I feel so selfish but have to admit the truth. I didn’t see anything “live”, I thankfully didn’t experience it firsthand, and don’t have to attempt to erase those images from my mind. I can sleep well at night. I have no right to feel intense sadness because of this. I didn’t lose anyone. I didn’t watch people falling from the sky. I didn’t have to outrun a tidalwave of dust, glass and steel. The only thing that gives me pause is the fact that the children who come into the bookstore are crying more now, throwing more tantrums, and we have many more books dealing with loss and the meaning of Heaven displayed on our tables. That I’m fielding one call a day asking if we have “the Nostradamus book” in stock. I also hurt for the relatives and friends, lining up in front of cameras to show a photo of their missing. For the 9 firemen from my neighborhood company who I used to shop with at the local C-town supermarket after work. They would park the truck outside the store and browse the aisles, buying massive amounts of pasta, etc. I hurt for those men I will never again hear bicker with each other over what the dinner menu should be for that night. I know what it’s like to truly respect firemen—I am ashamed to admit that it took something like this for me to appreciate them. I did cry. But when I cried, it was because I was overcome with a sense of patriotism. This tragedy has taken away a bit of the extreme loneliness that I have. I feel a sense of belonging that I haven’t felt in a long time. We are all part of something—the SAME thing—together. The power of knowing what you belong to is crippling. No one has really ever understood why I love this city so much, or why I love this country—I could never define the thing that kept me in this city. That “thing” was finally defined for me. That is why I cry. When those towers fell, so did our walls. We no longer lament over the idiosynchracies of life—at least for now. Now I know what I had been reciting every day at Catholic school, “…We are all one nation, under God, INDIVISIBLE, with unity and justice for all.”
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