When the Smoke Clears and the Tears Dry

My husband and I came to visit our son in New York in the Spring after 9/11. As a young film student, he had chosen NYU “to be at the center of the world” and for several months, I believe he was. We weren’t allowed into ground zero, but stood in front of the church nearby, where the gravestones had been knocked down and some smashed. Posters and photos, tee shirts, bottles of beer, flowers and many many mementos were affixed to the iron fence bordering the church graveyard. As we waited in line for the ground zero viewing, we were struck with the display of affection and notices of “loving wife, mother of three” all along the way.

I’d had coffee once years ago in the deli downstairs, shopped at the bookstore in Tower 2, put a dollar in a bucket for a guy playing the guitar in the subway station, bought chocolate bunnies in yellow cellophane for my kids at Easter at the bakery, on previous visits to the City. The station below the towers was a city of people most of the time.

The sky was gray and it still sent a chill to see a plane overhead as we approached the gaping hole in the ground. We thought about the Broadway show we would see that evening, the shopping we needed to do for our son’s room. Anything to take our mind off the experience we were going to have–looking into the big hole in the ground. I was scared. I glanced up to examine the tree we were standing under still filled with debris. Though it had rained many times, a gray sticky dust clung stubbornly to the bark, along with pieces of white strips of metal and a brown stringy material that hung like moss in the bayou. When I looked at the debris closer, I recognized the twisted pieces of mini blinds, whirled into a shape like a giant cluster of grapes or a five foot bee hive. And the brown mossy material? Shredded pantyhose.

I will never forget that day. I waited my turn, and then looked into the hole like looking into the fires of Hell itself. I was so grateful I didn’t know anyone who perished there. But I was wrong.

My high school friend, Naomi, valedictorian of our graduating class, was giving a presentation at the top of the Windows on the World restaurant for a Jewish women’s charity. Years later my friend Chad, the exchange student who flew all the way from Algeria to Palo Alto for our high school reunion in 2006, and who told me his face glowing, how he held the joy and love of America in his heart, “I carry in my heart a little piece of California,” was killed at the UN bombing there later in the year.

I grieve for the senseless deaths of such good people. Those are only two of the many, but they were my friends, people I went to high school with in California, caught trying to make a difference. A new category was added to the deaths column in our reunion updates: victims of terror. My how the world has changed for us.

We came home and resumed our normal lives after our visit to NYC, and I didn’t notice the change in my Jr. High School son’s behavior. 9/11 had affected him too. I’ll be honest with you, when he was ready to graduate high school, I was a coward and would have preferred he go play soccer at a college somewhere, marry a cheerleader and settle down. But, at 18 he enlisted in the Navy, and became an elite warrior. And he wants to make a difference. I’m happy to say he is very much alive today.

It was easier to cheer him on in the box as he made those fabulous saves. But I cheer him on every day, and, God willing, he will come home to me safe. And the cycle of life continues. He’ll have a son in a month, and we expect him home for the birth.

I think we all are warriors. Some of us are trained and plan for it. Others are just living our lives and are taken as innocents. The best tribute I can give all of them who died that day, an all those who died trying to save others, is to live my life fully, enjoy the richness and love of this great country, savoring every single morsel of freedom available to me. And to continue to tell the story. And never forget.