12gauge.com 2002 - World Trade Center Tragedy

Notes on the Unspeakable

It was a gorgeous Tuesday morning. A little on the cool side, which I appreciated, after months of assault by summer rays. There was a tinge of Autumn in the breeze coming in through my window, and my dog, her nose in the air, begged me to take her out to the park for a walk. As usual, NPR Morning News was on my radio, and I was about to down my cup of tea and head out the door with Tundra in tow. Within an hour, that world as I knew it changed. Inexorably.

Nothing will ever be the same after this. It will affect everything, the arts, the economy, the sense of being American, and relationships with our loved ones. All the things we take for granted will no longer be so. All the things we fretted and argued about will be trivial. Just to think that the biggest thing on my mind up until the moment of ground zero was the apparent failure of Wireless Encryption Protocol baffles me now. When the worst that could happen happened, I felt impotent. Powerless. Depressed. Enraged. And I grieved, as others did, for all the innocent dead and the their loved ones left behind to go on intrepidly without them, without their passion and warmth. I am still grieving, as others are.

I am looking at the skyline of downtown Manhattan, across the short stretch of East River, from the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights. There are bouquets of yellow flowers on the guard fence along the stretch of the Promenade, and hand written signs about a candlelight vigil scheduled for tonight. It’s Thursday. Across the New York Harbor, the Lady Liberty looks sullen and tired. Past the guard fence, a blanket of gray-white dust covers where once stood the twin towers, a semaphore of nothingness that turns every head and transfixes the eyes. I will never get used to not seeing the two giant skyscrapers that I grew up with, that I remember seeing as far back as I can remember. And to think of the lives lost there, some of them desperate enough to jump—especially the couple who held hands as they did so—laser-etched forever into my memory.

I got an email this morning, one of those chain emails from a well-meaning friend of a friend, urging us to wear red-white-and-blue today, in a show of solidarity, and “to honor the men and women who died and those who risk their lives to save lives.” I knew I didn’t have any T-shirt with an American flag. What I have is a pair of Mets tickets for one of the last season games next week. Baseball is utterly trivial in times of gravity such as this, but I am looking forward to this game, granted it will be played, because we need to hold our chin up high and resume our lives, our work and our play. And carry on. I also know that when I hear the national anthem sang at Shea Stadium, I’m going to hold my head up high, but I may just lose it, along with 30,000 others.

God bless America.

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