the anniversaries of September 11 have always been very personal for me. every year on this day for the past several years, i stop and think about what it has meant to me and how i have changed, how it changed me. more than anything i remember.
i spent my first few anniversaries remembering how scared i was - as an invincible and fearless 22 year old, it was my first moment of realizing true physical mortality. i remember the running and the desire to throw up and then days after, how sad the deepest parts of sadness could be in commiserating over our lost safety and comfort in our wonderful city. i remember finding solace in american flags and how we checked on each other, even strangers. asking "how are you" was a bit like asking if the heartbreak was gone yet. the healing began, we all went back to work, we all emerged from our shells and soon enough the comfort of New York returned with a greater sense of strength and closeness, physically and emotionally.
since then, i've moved thousands of miles away and left behind the person i was in new york, creating a new life for myself in california. 9/11 means different things to people on the west coast, so far away from new york and the pentagon. the american flag means nothing that special and "how are you" has gone back to its literal meaning. i hear about different stories that people have for remembering where they were on that day, recalling it like where they were when the Challenger exploded or when Kennedy was shot. it all seems to involve turning on a tv and receiving a phone call. i want to relate and i listen to these stories but i find it so hard to articulate both the fear and the strength i found as someone who experienced a changed New York City before, during and after the attacks on a day where we lost tv and phone access and all we had was just being in the same place at a really unfortunate time.
the best thing i can do is keep it to myself and remember in my own personal tribute ritual, reflecting for a few moments during the day on luck and strength and calling my best friends in new york just to say that i remembered today and i remembered them and i remembered us all. each year that passes i remember less of the physical aspects of that day but the sadness remains, cratered deep in me. my little ritual seems isolated and insignificant, particularly now in an area where few people in my life can still relate. but the few minutes i do this personal tribute of remembering and dedication to remembering carries me through yet another year.
i wrote a long journal entry on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. i read it every so often. i'm sharing it here.
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5 years or yesterday
I will not let you forget because it feels like just yesterday and not 5 years ago. I can’t watch today’s tributes. I know that they show the planes in slow motion and that slice of orange explosion that killed hundreds of people in the blink of an eye. I have to pay tribute in my own private way. I remember.
I knew something was so wrong when I looked up and saw the huge black hole that engulfed the entire sky, all the smoke, the falling paper, people screaming about others jumping. This was the meaning of apocalypse, like an invisible tsunami barreling through streets which 20 minutes before had been bankers and lawyers and couriers and delivery men. I remember people crying and all the running people screaming "not again, not again."
When the first tower fell, it felt like a bomb, an earthquake, an avalanche all at once except that it was here in New York and it was very real. I remember the dozens of people around me that suddenly shouting "I can’t believe it did you see that, it just fell it just fell," by that time when I was running away from downtown under the Brooklyn Bridge. I watched a grown man fall to his knees crying about his babies who worked in the Towers. There was that man with the white hair running next to me who had run down 82 flights of stairs, he kept saying "I can’t believe I got out." I could say nothing back to him.
Films can’t capture the way burning metal smells, the way that dust and ash covered everything like a dirty reminder, the way the fluorescent lights were raised above the gaping holes left at Ground Zero as if directing a little bit of Heaven into this giant pit of Hell. Perhaps no one remembers that for 2 months afterwards, no one spoke above a whisper in downtown Manhattan. Do you remember the light on the street after that day? The sunlight on Broad Street that was unfamiliar because the shadow of buildings were gone? Movies don’t show that New Yorkers were stifled into silence after being heartbroken and that they gripped American flags and yellow ribbons in lieu of words. They don’t show the heartbreak of walls and walls of plastered posters made by children with messages of Find my Mommy, Have you Seen My Dad. That New York’s Finest and Bravest had to stand amongst the men with machine guns while the burden of their families and fallen friends weighed on them as they went back to their stations and lit candles. The most I could do was offer to buy them coffee. I felt helpless.
I will not let you forget because this one specific sunny day in 2001 and the following month, two months, and five years after the fact are very much a part of me, a part of us and a part of everyone. It is under my eyes, in my silence while I look out the window, it’s the part of us that comes back when we hear jet planes fly above and when we see ashes settle. We remember when we see skylines and when we hear Amazing Grace. We remember and we’ll remember for you.
