The first time I saw New York City was from my sister’s 1983 Nissan Maxima, wedged in the middle of the backseat between my parents. At age twelve or so—and really at any age—your first encounter with the city is overwhelming, exciting, fascinating. I leaned my head back and looked straight up out the back window, because it was the only way I could see the tops of these buildings, for which the word skyscraper seemed insufficient.
Then I got to see New York from the other angle—the top, looking down, at about 110 floors up on the observatory level of the World Trade Center. I still remember the shaking doors of the elevator, because the little metal box that I was standing in (along with a large group of other wide-eyed tourists with fanny packs and Nikes) accelerated so quickly. I was excited and awestruck--but it never occurred to me to be afraid. We were there buying discount tickets to Broadway shows, seeing the sights of the city that never sleeps—the most immortal town I could ever think of—at a time when my whole life was spread before me.
On September 11, 2001, I was 30 years old. At that time, my generation hadn’t personally experienced anything of this level of devastation, like those before us who had lived through World Wars, or Vietnam. Our psyches were molded through the fabulous Eighties, when bigger was better and we were taught by example that life was all about money and success and ourselves. John Hughes taught us that the underdog could win, the awkward girl could get the guy with the Porsche, the nerdy boy could get a pair of girl’s underpants. But what did we—raised on Dynasty and designer jeans—know about being underdogs?
And then, within a couple of hours on a Tuesday morning, we were reminded what it was like to be picked on. To be beaten up. To find out we weren’t immortal after all. And, like a John Hughes film, we banded together—nerds, jocks, princesses and all—and leaned on each other. Because everyone knew someone—someone who was supposed to be there, or had just been there. Or, in the worst of all cases, someone who was there. Maybe even going to buy tickets for a Broadway show, or seeing the sights.
The morning of September 11, 2001, found me sitting alone in my pajamas in front of the television, crying to my husband on the phone, who was already safely at his own office here in our small Southern town. I remember the unceasing news coverage, the second-guessing. My breath catching in my chest as the buildings collapsed.
But when I think back about that day, and the days that followed, I overwhelmingly remember the profound silence. Standing in the front yard talking to my neighbor about how strange it seemed, how quiet the world was, because there were no airplanes flying. Feeling in my heart that our world had changed. And it wasn’t just the lack of planes overhead on a sunny day in September.
Not long after that, my world changed again. Our eldest son was born in the fall of 2002, part of the post 9/11-baby-boom. (To this day, his class at elementary school is larger than the class before and after.) There’s nothing in this world that will make you feel less immortal than bringing life into this world. Suddenly every table has a pointed corner, every knife a razor sharp edge, every car driving dangerously too fast and too close. And that’s just on your own street.
Ten years later, I guess I’m more in touch with my mortality than ever. My father has Alzheimer’s. My son’s preschool friend has fought leukemia. People around me have died, and cheated death, and had their lives irrevocably changed by circumstance. I did not lose anyone close to me on September 11, as others did. But it changed me, thank God. Because I don’t want to be the same person I was before September 11, 2001. But I want to remember this day as more than just a day that something bad happened to a lot of really good people.
I pray that I—that we--remember every day that we are not immortal. But not with fear of what might happen; instead, with joy, for every moment we have with the wonderful people around us. I pray that we remember how we came together, not just as a country, but as friends and neighbors. As fellow underdogs, every one of us struggling and learning and striving to get through this life the best we can.
Because we are all the jock, the princess, the outcast, the nerd. We are a country full of labels that, every once in a while, remembers how to set those labels aside and just be people.
