In the mail today I got my
New Yorker, New York Magazine, Bergdorf Goodman magazine, and a Bergdorf Goodman catalog. It was a very New York-centric mail day, to say the least. Funny it should happen to be September 11. Today is one of those days my generation invokes like our parents do the assassination of JFK. Or how many of us Gen Xers invoke the day the Challenger blew up. Seven years ago today I was wearing a white tank top and blue Abercrombie sweatpants, with my pink Air Max Tailwind sneakers. I had a morning class, and our fellow sorority sister Stacy would come by the house and pick my roommate and I up and we'd walk over to the psych building. My roommate and I would usually watch the news while we got dressed and got ready, but for some reason, that day, we didn't. So we had no idea what Stacy was talking about when she told us that a plane hit the WTC. My first thought was,
omg, my cousin works there. I pulled out his business card and tried to call him, but the line wouldn't connect - for reasons none of us knew at the time. We walked over to class - and like so many people feel the need to mention, it was an absolutely beautiful fall day that day. Warm, clear blue skies, the sun was shining on our picturesque Northeast campus an hour and a half from NYC, and it seemed like the ideal fall day. We entered the building where class was, and I don't remember who I got on the phone, but I either spoke to my dad or my cousin, who told me that they didn't know much, but they think it was a hijacked plane. Mind you, this hadn't hit the news yet, about the hijacking possibility. It was still unknown chaos at this point. But we knew my cousin was alive at this point, and he was going to be part of whoever was helping these people in the towers. I went to class, we watched tv for about 5 more minutes, and then my teacher
turned off the tv and we had our full 2 hour class. It wasn't until after I got out of class that I was told the towers had fallen. I remember this dread washing over me and thinking,
naaahhh....how could the towers fall? Impossible. Cousin Michael is there. But it was true. Again and again we watched the twin towers crumple like cardboard into the ground of Manhattan, taking thousands of lives and stories and hopes. It was like watching a movie with the neatest special effects but underlying horror. I kept trying to call my cousin, my grandmother, my parents - but since we were so close to the city, nobody's phone was working. The school had a room with lines that actually got out, and it was mobbed with students calling their families to see if everyone was okay (lots of people had family who lived in the city or worked there) and to assure their families we were fine. I spoke to my dad, who said no one had heard from my cousin since before the buildings fell.
I went back to the sorority house and was able to call my mother, and I think the horror was finally sinking in - I just remember screaming, "Michael is at the WTC and no one has heard from him since this morning! He's there! I can't get a hold of him!" And her response - "Oh, shit." It was a very scary morning. The campus called everyone to the front lawn for a prayer service and to basically calm everybody down, and also to read a list of the alumni who were working in the towers - and there were a decent amount.
I remember going to lunch with some of my sisters and barely being able to eat a bagel. Perrie was trying to call her family, who lived in Tribeca, and all of us were still in that hazy, half-shell-shocked daze of did what happen this morning REALLY happen? I finally got a phone call that my cousin was alive and fine, much to my relief. He had been pulling into an underground garage for work when the first plane hit, and he backed out, parked somewhere, and ran to work. He was part of the recovery mission and was at Ground Zero all day that day. He has pieces of the building. I still have a business card of his from the towers.
My friend Alex and I drove to the nearest Red Cross and tried to donate blood - but we were turned away because they said there was no use for it.
For days, our tv was on almost all the time, with the endless ticker at the bottom of the screen, naming all the victims on the planes, all the families pleading for their loved ones who were "missing" to come home.
2 years later, I stood on the steps of St. Vincent's hospital in Manhattan and looked at the original scores of Missing posters that were now under glass, attached to the building's wall. It was eerie, seeing these people's lives suspended in time but knowing the outcome. Down the block, on a wire fence, there were dozens and dozens of ceramic ornaments commemorating 9/11. Two years after the fact, the Village was still populated with the ghosts of Ground Zero. NY still is haunted. The images of the buildings still show up in pictures of the skyline, albeit in our mind's eye. When we think of NYC, the towers involuntarily come to mind. Old movies that have shots of the WTC in them bring us, for a second, back to a much different time. Going to Ground Zero in 2003, what struck me was that I was looking, essentially, at a huge graveyard. In the middle of a large, booming, vibrantly alive city, was a mass grave that we all still felt a need to look at. on 9/11/03, living in Manhattan, at the time the first plane hit, bells rang out around the city and everything stopped for one minute. And again at the time the second plane hit. It was a surreal moment.
So seven years later, here we are. This morning, around 8:30, I was on the bus going to school, and it hit me that today was 9/11 and I looked at my watch, and for the millionth time, thought about what hundreds of lives must have been like in the calm before the storm. It seems like such a long time ago, but at the same time, like just yesterday.
