9/11 Reflections

As soon as I was out of the shower on Sunday, I found myself glued to the TV, half expecting to see breaking news about some catastrophic event in New York or Washington, DC. MSNBC was replaying their coverage of 9/11/01, and I found myself watching it for more than half an hour, caught up in remembering what it was like to watch that for the first time ten years ago. It was strange to listen to the news anchors speculate about what was going on; it's hard to imagine a time when we didn't know. I did not expect to be as moved as I was, remembering the confusion and bewilderment of that morning. I had an 8:00 class at Vanderbilt, and when I left my dorm the first plane had just hit. Someone mentioned this in the hallway, and I hardly paused on my way to class, blearily dismissing it as an unfortunate accident. When I returned an hour and a half later, the situation had changed dramatically. A girl on my hall, an only child, was from New York, and both of her parents worked in the financial district. I can still hear the mixture of hysteria and relief in her voice when she finally got through to her mother after 45 minutes of dialing and redialing and learned that both of her parents were safe. The confident, competent young woman I'd come to know dissolved as she sobbed into the phone, pleading with her mother to make it all make sense. It was an explanation that nobody could give.

If you hadn't turned on a TV or seen a newspaper, you'd almost have had no idea that Sunday was a significant day in New York. People shopped, went to restaurants, and took public transportation as usual. There didn't seem to be any tension in the air at all. Minus the media, however, there were reminders. In the afternoon, I accompanied Ed to B&H Camera to look for a lens cap. As we waited, an employee remarked to a fellow worker that this was a very special day for him. "What, is it your birthday?" asked the second. "No," replied the first, "on this day, ten years ago, I almost lost my life." (He seemed to have rehearsed this line.) He told about how the train he rode to work had been running late that morning and therefore missed being crushed.

Life in New York is my reality now, and this makes the attacks ten years ago feel much more real than they did before. Watching all this from Nashville, it felt almost like a movie. It was hard to imagine what it must have been like to be here that day. But on Sunday, as I listened to witnesses describing what they saw as they walked to work, I realized that not only did I know all of the streets they were describing, that this was now the geography that makes up my life. I know what it's like to emerge from the subway station into crowded streets for another work day. I know just how long it takes to evacuate your building from a high floor, using a seemingly endless, spiraling stairwell, and how your head begins to spin after just a few flights, and how the sense of panic when you don't know what's happening can magnify this. Everyone I work with and many people I socialize with were in the city on September 11th; in fact as soon as my boss, who is an MD, heard that there was a fire at the WTC, he hurried from a meeting at the NYU hospital to the site to help treat the people who made it out alive; on a shelf in his office is the hard hat that he was issued during the days he volunteered. (Read a full account of his experiences here.)

I did not visit the memorial site yesterday. Even if I'd had the opportunity to get one of the tickets for the ceremony, part of me felt that it would be ridiculous to take that kind of risk needlessly - it seemed a likely target. Another part of me felt like an outsider: I wasn't there when it happened and have no personal connection to what happened. But I will certainly visit it in the near future, and my reflections will have a new significance when I do.

Memorial site