I took this photograph the year, in fact the summer, before the Twin Towers fell. I was visiting a friend who was living in New Jersey and we were on the ferry crossing to the city at the time. And then, short months later, I watched on TV as they collapsed and burned.
I remember.
I was living in South Carolina at the time, attending graduate school. I'd caught the morning news before heading to an early biostats class, not sure even what, if anything, was going on. Noting that a plane had "reportedly" crashed into one of the towers, I called Aaron, who was working at Shaw AFB at the time, to tell him to turn on the news. Then I actually drove to class, attended class and afterwards wandered about the campus, catching snippets of the situation. Finally it became horrifyingly clear. Even in South Carolina, so far from NYC, we all felt the tremors of this earthshaking event. Students wandered aimlessly, talking on cell phones, reaching out to connect to loved ones in or near the city, but even more to call friends and family, locally, just to hear their voices, to reassure and to discuss and to reflect on how something like this could happen. I didn't see Aaron for three days, as he was on lock down at the base.
The town where I was born and raised is a little over an hour from NYC. Many of my childhood and early adulthood memories are wrapped up in the Big Apple - memories that involve my grandmother, my introduction to the arts (via Broadway), our annual trips at Christmas to the city, complete with the Nutcracker Ballet, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, ice skating in Rockefeller Center, FAO Schwartz, horse drawn carriage rides in Central Park, all the storefronts dressed and decorated in the reds and greens of the season, the smell of chestnuts from street vendors, the warm blasts of air coming up from the subway beneath. New York was, is, to me, class trips, trips with friends, my first underage alcoholic drink (!), watching the Fourth of July fireworks from an old high school friend's apartment over the Hudson, the place I bought my senior high school prom dress, pastrami on rye, dill pickles, kielbasi, culture, the smells, tastes, sounds, shopping. People. Oh, the people.
And while it still is many of those things, I won't tell you it's the same. And I won't even try to tell you that my meager memories hold a candle in importance to those who only remember the city for what it took from them, rather than what they gained from it. I am blessed to have these happy memories, tainted by the perception of this loss rather than any real gut wrenching connection to it. Because I was one of the fortunate ones.
I did spend many days following September 11th reaching out to friends and family, checking in. My best friend, attending law school in Newark, NJ, watched in her rear view mirror as the towers burned and were engulfed by smoke, all while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic heading away from the city. But she was safe. My closest friend from college had an older sister living in the city who was untouched.
Given all the possible connections, and the geographical closeness of my home town to NYC, I ended up only knowing one person who perished on September 11th. That person was a cousin of someone I went to high school with. So technically, I didn't know him so much as knew of him. I'd never met him.
But I will remember.
And consider myself extremely fortunate that I was not touched more closely by this tragedy.
And I honor those who fought to save some and could not save others, or who died fighting. Just as I honor people like my husband who, despite the politics and red tape, continue to fight for freedom and a better, safer way of life. They don't promise anything except that they will do their best to serve their country. And that, I believe, they do.
I remember.
And I will not forget.
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