Christy Writes: Retro Reflections on September 11
It’s early morning here and I’m drinking coffee and looking out my writing room window at nothing in particular. It’s too soon to tell what kind of day it will be here weather-wise, but emotion-wise, it will be the same as it’s been for the past few years whenever September 11 rolls around – melancholy, subdued, but with a distinct flavor of life going on, as is its wont, while in the back of our minds, we remind ourselves that we will have persevered, and will keep persevering, because that’s just what we do.
I always give a wry little smile when I see the now-fading “Never Forget!” stickers on the back window of cars. I doubt anyone who was able to comprehend what was happening on that beautiful sunny September morning will ever forget any of it. I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. I even remember what I was wearing. It’s my generation’s only true understanding of why our parents remember in similar detail the day President Kennedy was shot.
On Sept. 14, 2001, I wrote a column for my hometown newspaper about that whole horrible day. It was my way of sorting through my thoughts and sharing them with the people who, eight years before, had given me a wonderful send off as I headed east to pursue my dreams. As I am reading through it again this morning, I’m taken by several things. The rawness of my young emotions, the ripping away of my naiveté, many things I realize now that I couldn’t see then. I can also feel it all again – the panic, the confusion, the devastation.
Rather than writing today about my September 11 reflections as they look now, I thought I’d reprint that article and share my feelings as they were then, as the dust literally settled around me.
I’m sad, I’m sickened, I’m scared and I’m mad as hell.
Since Tuesday morning, when I heard that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center, I’ve been experiencing a range of emotions I never thought possible. And I know that just about everyone out here – in fact, in the whole world – feels the same way.
I moved to the East Coast eight years ago to fulfill a lifelong dream to live and work in the New York City metropolitan area. My walls had always been decorated with New York City posters, the famous skyline glittering at me wherever I looked. I could never explain the draw I felt to New York, only that I had to be out there, to be, in the words of Frank Sinatra, a part of it.
And now I am. In every sense of the word, I’m a part of it. When I got a call from a friend on Tuesday morning telling me about the disaster at the World Trade Center, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t grasp what he was saying to me. I kept waiting for the punch line that never came. It didn’t make any sense. Two commercial jets could not just crash into the Twin Towers. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I turned on the radio on my desk and went to my window to look out. The announcer’s frantic voice was confirming what I’d heard, and I could see smoke where I had once been able to see the tops of the World Trade Center towers.
I was numb. Just two days earlier, I had been in the city with a friend, walking around lower Manhattan and taking pictures. It was about 5 p.m. on an idyllic Sunday afternoon and I had taken a picture of the World Trade Center because it looked so pretty with the late afternoon sunlight streaming between the towers.
And now it was ablaze. Lives were being taken away behind that curtain of smoke and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t even cry.
Some of my co-workers came into my office to listen with me. The radio screamed that one of the towers had collapsed. I began to cry. My mind raced to the Wilkinsons, the family I lived with for two years when I first moved here. Pat and Nancy both work in the city. Please God. Please God, not my friends.
Fighter jets flew over our office building. The knife-like sound of helicopters followed. The radio screamed that the second tower had collapsed. We were all crying, holding each other, somehow wanting it not to be true, but knowing that horribly, irrevocably, it was.
When I got to my apartment that evening, I stood in my front yard, staring at the smoke that hung over my beloved Manhattan like a funeral shroud. I still couldn’t understand how such a thing could have happened. And now that I know what happened, I understand it even less.
As the story has begun to unfold over the past three days, we’ve all found out more about what actually transpired on Tuesday morning, and I have to tell you, I am furious. Foreign terrorists, coming onto American soil, taking American lives in such a brutal, terrible, vicious way that even countries that are our foes have condemned the attacks. It’s being called the worst act of terrorism ever on US soil, and it happened right in my backyard.
These things happen in Beirut, in Belfast, in Serbia. I see news footage all the time of foreign faces running scared down unfamiliar roads and I feel bad, but it’s nothing like the hollow ache I feel now. The images of Americans running down the streets of New York, stark terror on their faces as the city falls to ruins behind them, will be burned on my mind forever. The happy little world I’ve built around myself has been shattered. My safety net is gone. I feel violated. Every time I look out on the horizon and see faint smoke rising from where my beautiful Twin Towers used to stand, I feel it all over again.
Each day I wake up wondering if this is the day I’m going to hear that someone I know was found beneath the rubble. So far I haven’t, but that’s little consolation when I’m surrounded by people who are no so fortunate. I have friends who are still awaiting word on missing family members. And every day, the hope grows a little dimmer.
I suppose at this point all I can do, all any of us can do, is keep praying. Praying for the families, the victims, the survivors, our country, and the future. Because right now, it’s all we have.
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