The early part of Sept. 11, in my memory, is like in the movies when memories move around the screen with streaks. It’s me, stirring from a sleep, straining to listen to a voicemail being downstairs in my townhouse left by the man who will be my boyfriend, my husband, my ex-husband as he vocally illustrates what he’s seeing on his own TV screen as he sits in front of his own, presumably channel surfing himself until he came upon horror. And he called me.
Shortly after, my acting managing editor calls, because I work at a newspaper, all hands on deck and he wants me in, now. And I, in year two of my journalism career, I say no. I was born in Brooklyn, and I have family who works in Manhattan. I’ll be in at my normal time, which is around 5 p.m., I say. The phone lines. I can’t even reach my mother.
I do report to work later that day, having ascertained that my mother, my cousin and her husband are OK, and are coming home. My aunt, she is OK. I report to work and everything is apeshit. There are reports of bomb threats against the GW Bridge. This is a moment when anything can happen. You built a cocoon with you, and your hitting partner in tennis who will become your boyfriend, and your workplace, and suddenly, anything is possible. A bomb could land on you right now and it would feel the way it felt for you to sing hymns about death in church every Sunday, except it was for you, your sweet hour of prayer.
No. You’re in the newsroom, combing the wires. Your job, as a copy editor as this newspaper, is clear. Tell the story and you are faced with raw, unedited images and information which oddly helps you compartmentalize. But the thing is that you are seated almost directly across from the city editor that night, and he copes like you cope. He tells jokes. But they are not landing with you tonight. You want to turn and scream at him for joking about the GW Bridge blowing up as he edits copy. You don’t because, you’re what, 20 years younger than you are now? It’s not funny, and you don’t have what you have now — the nerve to tell him to shut up.
It takes a couple days for you to approach the city desk and say you want to write about New York, the way you remember it and the way it’ll never be again. And your column publishes and your heart swells. It’s a record. Now, Hudson River Park is etched in the memory of my readers like it is with me. I believe we’ll rise from the ashes. Together.
But the letters to the editor begin pouring in. Maybe most are good and kind but the ones who accuse of me off … taking advantage of my connection to the city? … Stop whining. Stop bragging. We get it already, oh my god.
There weren’t that many like that. But enough to remember.
It’s enough to remember why Sept. 11 hits me different twenty years later. Those people intent on eviscerating my narrative amounted to a muffled whine then. Maybe they didn’t know how to process the feelings they held. But now they surely do.
Now, we’re in a pandemic and people refuse to do the basics in protecting each other. And in the midst of this, this anniversary. And I’m supposed to believe we are really stopping and reflecting? Because now, thousands die a day in an attack we can see coming and we … well, sweet hour of prayer. No. The people dying now were meant to live, as were the people who died when terrorism struck them down. They should be alive today and I would argue that the balance of them would tip us enough to where we’d not argue about keeping each other safe. An entire flight of people decided, You know what? We’re not going to be pawns. Let’s not be pawns. Whatever happens, we won’t be pawns. They knew the risk.
We continue to hold this day in reverence. But just as many just go through the motions. We don’t experience this day the same now as we did then, and the difference is that those of us old enough, we now know it.