I've struggled with whether to write about this today. More because of me than, you. I still find it very hard to think about. Easier, but still quite difficult. Ultimately, I figure that's a good reason to write a little on it. Also, I didn't have anything else lined up and it makes me feel good to get something up each weekday.
I was living in Jersey City and working in New York City in September 2001. Stephen and I had a cute little apartment on the Palisades--a long cliff set back a bit from the Hudson River--that overlooked the New York skyline. The view from our kitchen window and the window in our shower went from the Verrazano Narrows bridge at the southern tip of the island all the way north to the George Washington Bridge. It you flattened your left cheek up against the window and peered south you could even see the Statue of Liberty.
The towers were a prominent feature of the view.
Stephen had already left for the city, taking the midtown PATH train, when I woke up to workers outside talking about something I couldn't quite make out. But it was clearly bad and got me up out of bed seconds after the second plane hit. I saw the smoke pouring from the tops of towers as I was turning on the TV to find out what the hell. They were just realizing it wasn't an accident.
Like everyone else, I spent the rest of the day watching the whole thing unfold. The difference was I had the view from my window as corroboration of the unbelievable images on the screen. I looked like I was at a tennis match. TV, window, TV, window. Much of the footage was shot from New Jersey so they always looked the same. It was very strange.
Thankfully, I was able to talk to Stephen early, before the phones all went to shit, and hear that his train--his usual one didn't go through the WTC terminal, but you never know when someone will change up their routine or get diverted to another train--took him safely to where he was going. He was uptown, far from the action. Though he started trying in the late morning, he wasn't able to make his way home until much later that evening. I can't actually remember exactly how he managed to get off the island.
I thank god I didn't have binoculars or a telescope and
that I don't have to haunted by the images of the people jumping from
and burning in the windows. I probably would have looked. It's just
my nature. But I think it would have damaged me, deeply, for life.
One of the starkest realizations of the day was when the first tower fell. For minutes on the news they were saying, "Something just happened! We don't know what just happened! We're waiting for news of what just happened." But I knew. The perspective of distance gave me a leg up on the reporters and eye witnesses on the street who had been engulfed in a cloud of smoke and ash. I could see from my window that the top of the first building no longer stood even with it's neighbor. I could see that it was falling. I watched as the top plummeted like an express elevator.
I was telling them. Standing there in the kitchen, I was answering their questions, telling them that the tower had fallen. They didn't hear me, or the thousands of other people who were probably looking out their windows saying the same thing. Telling the TV the horrible thing they'd just witnessed. But the TV people, and everyone else in America, figured it out soon enough.
By that afternoon, the air where I lived was filled with fallout--ash, tiny bits of office paper, tiny bits of god knows what else. It was horrifying.
I didn't leave my house for over a week. And I didn't go back into the city to work for more than 2 weeks. It wasn't fear of something else happening. I was just rocked to my core. I was scared, but I was scared of the emotion I think. My first trip into the city was hell. I cried the entire way. The train stations were filled with flowers and every light pole was an impromtu missing persons bulletin board. The faces of the dead were everywhere. People put their hands on you at the street corners and asked if you were okay. Others showed you pictures of their mothers and brothers and asked if you'd seen them. I was a zombie, and almost a full hour late to work because I inadvertently walked past a midtown fire station and couldn't make myself walk away from the faces of firemen staring at me from the memorial pictures set out on the sidewalk. It got easier, but not for a long time.
We had been ready to leave the city before September 11th, but the attack definitely strengthened my resolve. That and the nightly kitchen window progress reports that went on for 6 month after. It's still smoking. It's still smoking. Still smoking. Still. It smoked for so long. And the smell. There's nothing like looking out over the stinking graveyard of a national tragedy every single day as you stand naked in the shower or sip your coffee. We were gone by the spring of 2002.
Now I live in the middle of nowhere on the border between Idaho and Wyoming, two of the least populated states in the country. Unless you count Dick Cheney when he's here fishing, there aren't any targets anywhere in the vicinity. Not that that's why we picked this place. I think we picked it because of the beauty, the pace and the overriding feeling of calm it inspires. The no targets thing is just a little bonus.
I guess that's my September 11th story. Though I've talked about it, I don't think I've ever written it out before. Blogs were in their infancy back then, if they even existed at all, and I could never quite make myself journal about it.
So, there. Done. Catharsis achieved. Moving on now...
