It's set in New York, and watching it, I was struck once again with that feeling of GodImissManhattanremindmewhatI'mdoinghereagain. Much of the movie is set around NYU, and I remember taking my Psych GREs there my first time living in the city, touring the social work school there, eating cupcakes outside at Magnolia (before they became huge) and watching basketball at the West 4th courts. I miss the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights, and sitting on the steps at Low Library at Columbia; I miss the carousel in Central Park and all the different Starbucks' I used to frequent, from the one near West 4th near Bigelow's to the two near my old apartment [a classic 7, no less], to the one on W.82 to the one near my office at MSKCC. And Oren's Coffee Shop orange brioches from Balthazar, running through the subway to dash onto the train at the last minute before the doors close and meandering through the Union Square Greenmarket.
In these respects, Chapel Hill just isn't measuring up.
Don't get me wrong. I love how the people at the co-op in my neighborhood (yes, actually in the neighborhood proper) know me, know how I like my coffee, and even grab me fresh bagels from the back. I love how even the kids - or most of them, anyway - in my neighborhood are actually mannerly and say hi if you pass them on the sidewalk. I love how the kids ride their bikes to the elementary school in my 'hood (yes, again, in the 'hood proper) and just lean their bikes on the rack outside. I love the smallness of the public library and the fact that I run into people I know all the time at the gym, in my 'hood, at Whole Foods.......but sometimes this Northern girl needs some city time.
Anyway. Back to the movie. At the end, the main guy, Tyler, goes to his dad's office to meet with him. They've finally started to reconcile and things are looking up. Tyler's sister is at school, and the teacher writes the date on the board, September 11, 2001. And I feel like anyone who lived near NY back then, their hearts clenched when they read that. I know mine did. Tyler's dad is running late because he took the little girl to school, and is on his way to the office. Tyler walks over to the windows and then the camera pans out and looks in from the outside and pulls back.....and he's in one of the Towers. And then the screen goes black. When it comes back on, you see people running, looking up at the sky, and you just know.
9/11 is my generation's JFK assasination. We all know where we were when we heard or saw. We all have our 9/11 stories. Just like, for a certain cohort of UNC students, we all know how we heard about Eve. Ironically, I was studying the other day with a classmate of mine who grew up in California, and only recently moved to the East coast, and she said to me, "I know you probably get asked this all the time, but you lived near NY during 9/11, right? What was that like?" And as we both shared our versions of that day, I realized that yes, her experience was very different. Very similar, but also very different. It was 5:30 in the morning there. She wasn't getting ready for class and watching it unfold. She had no family in the area, knew no one in NY or who worked in the towers.
Watching "Remember Me" knocked the breath from my lungs and brought hot tears to my eyes. Because I remember the frantic dialing of the phone to my cousin, who worked at the WTC. Because I remember everyone's cell phone was dead, that my school had to set up a command center of landlines to accomodate everyone calling their parents and family. I remember the midday prayer service on the campus's front lawn that warm, clear blue-skied Tuesday, and the vigil later that night.
I remember, two years later, when I moved to Manhattan, the city-wide moment of silence at the time the first plane hit. Time stopped, traffic stopped; the city was still palpably grieving. I remember going to Ground Zero with flowers and thinking how odd it was to be staring at a mass grave. Walking in the Village one night, I found myself walking past St.Vincent's, and they still had the "missing" posters from 9/11 under glass posted under the overhang. Looking at those fliers, I wondered, as I still do, when I think of that day, if any of those people had a premonition of what was going to happen.
Or if, like me, they woke up and marveled at what a beautiful Indian Summer day it was going to be.
2 comments:
I still remember that day perfectly. I had family living near the pentagon. And I live in NY state, 6 hours from NYC. I was in 8th grade. I remember 2 of my teachers whispering, and by the time I got to my history class my teacher had the TV on and somberly explained to us what was happening. My dad was a US history teacher at the time in my high school. He stopped teaching classes that day, and instead left the TV on, so that the students could absorb what was happening to our country, bc it was more than a book would ever teach them.
yeah....I had health psych that morning, and would you believe my professor actually TURNED OFF the tv's and we had no idea the towers fell until class was over. We had class. I still can't believe it.
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