Every New Yorker has a story about where they were on 9-11. Mine is not so dramatic.
First off, I had moved to New York a mere four months before the attacks. I hardly knew anyone in the city. I’d never even been inside the Twin Towers.
At the time, I was living in Midtown. Working two waitressing jobs. The night before, I’d worked late and been up even later writing. When the first plane hit the Twin Towers, I was sound asleep in my comfy bed.
It seems shocking to me that anyone could sleep thru a terror attack on their city. You’d think some inner intuitive sense would wake you up. Some evolutionary survival gene would jolt you from your sleep and you would instantly flee like a herd of caribou when a hungry lion appears out of the dust of the Sahara.
But apparently I have no such gene. I was sound asleep. All cozy in my bed while, just a few train stops away, thousands of people were going to their deaths.
I know I made coffee, because I remember lazily sitting with my coffee and my cigarette as I went online that morning to check my email. And I had a lot of emails that morning. WAY more than normal. The first one, from a friend back in Minneapolis was simply, “Are you okay?”
What? I took a drag off my cigarette and read the next one from another friend.
“Are you okay? Call me.”
It was surreal. I remembered a novel I’d read a few years earlier. “The Moustache” by Emmanuel Carree. A man wakes up one morning and decides to shave off his moustache. He turns to his wife and says, “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“My moustache? I got rid of it.”
“Moustache?” she replies. “You never had a moustache.”
Duh-duh-duuummmm!
The surreal feeling continued as I opened an email from my brother.
“Mom’s been trying to call you all morning, but she can’t get thru. She’s really worried. Can you call or email me to let us know you’re okay?”
What was going on?
I got up and turned on the TV. Every channel had their cameras focused on the same thing.
The Twin Towers in flames.
Half-asleep and still in my pajamas, it took a whole fifteen minutes for me to decipher what had happened. Even the news didn’t seem to know. The planes had already crashed into both towers. And I’m not sure if, by this time, the first one had fallen or not. It was all so strange and I wasn’t sure if I was watching repeats or live footage.
I was able to get on the phone and call my Mom.
I’m fine. I was sleeping. Don’t worry.
Honestly, I don’t know what everyone thought I might possibly be doing downtown that early in the morning, anyway. I was a waitress-slash-playwright. How people thought I’d managed to maneuver my playwrighting and coffee-pouring skills into a job in the financial sector, I have no idea. The only reason I might POSSIBLY be down there would have been if I’d gotten a job waiting tables at Windows on the World. And, even then, I NEVER worked breakfast shifts. The meager tips on eggs and toast had never been enough to drag me out of bed before the sun came up.
At some point, after I’d called some family and friends and returned some emails stating that I was “fine”, I remember seeing the second tower fall.
On TV. In my pajamas. With cinnamon infused coffee.
By this time, the news networks were reporting that this was no “accident”. New York City had been attacked. I was stunned. I’d only been here for four months. I’d barely unpacked. And I’d worked so hard just to get my two lousy waitress jobs. And now this?
Yes. I was thinking of myself. I had few friends here. Little emotional connection to the city. And one of my waiting tables jobs was in a comedy club. The other was in a tourist restaurant in Times Square. Suddenly, I saw a future with few people wanting to laugh and even fewer wanting to tour my fine city.
“Honey,” my Mom had said over the phone that morning, “why don’t you come home for awhile. I’ll send you a plane ticket.”
Under the circumstances, the last thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
I did spend the afternoon making calls to the few friends that I had here. One told me he just got home after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Another told me that he, too, was fine. He was also thinking it’d be the perfect night to try to pick up chicks. He’s a comic. I couldn’t really laugh, but I knew that humor was his way of dealing with the tragedy. Another friend who lived further downtown had to show her ID and proof of address just to get past police barricades.
And then there was the guy I was seeing. He flew a lot. To be honest, even before my concern about my jobs---I was concerned about him. Had he been on a plane that morning? Was he okay? Where the hell was he?
The way the phones were working that day, no one could call in to me, but I could call out. After my Mom, he was the first person I called.
He was fine. Not flying. At home. Not too far from where I was. Doing the same thing I was. Watching the news. Wondering what would happen next.
That morning, he’d seen both towers fall from the view in his penthouse apartment. Two years later, when his lease was up, he moved. He admitted that he hated the memory of looking out the window and watching it all unfold.
But that morning, he didn’t invite me over.
And I didn’t ask.
The relationship was still fairly new. And he’d lived in New York for twenty years. I knew he was going thru different emotions. He had a connection. I didn’t.
At least, those were the excuses I made. Looking back, I realize it was the moment I first mentally broke up with him. I was in a new city. Terrified. I just wanted to be held. And he wasn’t there. He hadn’t stepped up. If 9-11 was a relationship test, he failed.
I didn’t verbally break up with him. But I mentally did. I pulled back. I felt it. That barely perceptible drift that only the intimate can subliminally translate.
I knew no one who’d died in the towers. The whole thing was just too big to really comprehend.
What I could comprehend was being alone.
I made a cup of tea, vowed not to call him, and cried as I continued to watch the news. In one morning, I’d lost a relationship, two paying jobs, and the hope in my fabulous new city.
In my own way, within seconds, I’d also lost a life. I cried. But I cried for me. Poor healthy, alive and intact me.
Yes, I knew it in no way compared. But two gigantic towers full of people was just so big. So unreal. It was like something that happened in a foreign country---not a forty-five minute walk away.
Two hours later, I finally left my apartment. Police and Army personnel were everywhere. And a thick cloud of dust was in the air. Over the next few days, as the fires continued to burn, I could actually feel myself breathing in heavy soot when I went outside.
By this time, office workers from downtown had made their way to Midtown to catch their commutes home. Only a few were bleeding, but most all of them were covered in thick ash and soot. And most of them were in pairs---either finding a fellow co-worker to walk with or picking up a complete stranger along the way.
All were silent.
The silence that comes from trauma. But all of them had found someone to share it with. Even if it was very un-New York.
The usual manic energy of New Yorkers that I’d gotten used to was completely gone. No one was screaming “fuck you!” No one was yelling at their “homie’ across the street. It was a march of the zombies---only occasionally halted when a pair stopped in an open bar for a drink.
A few open bars posted “Happy Hour” specials.
There were plenty of takers.
Bits of burned paperwork from the Twin Towers even floated all the way to Midtown. Not a lot. But I remember seeing the bits and pieces. And the smoke.
Within days, hundreds of “missing” posters were plastered everywhere.
“John Smith. 38. 5 foot 10. 165 pounds. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Last seen in Tower Two.
Like their loved ones were lost neighborhood cats.
And the pigeons. They had all left Manhattan. Not a bird in sight except for a vacant lot near my corner.
I remember stopping at the sight.
A vacant lot where construction was about to take place.
On the lot, was a single dead pigeon.
But this single dead pigeon was surrounded by a dozen live pigeons standing guard over the body by forming an actual circle around it. Their feathered heads were bowed and they remained perfectly still. Not cooing. Not pecking at the ground for crumbs. Not walking around trying to mate with another pigeon.
Perfectly still. Like statues.
It was as if the pigeons were in mourning. I had never seen anything like it.
It was four days after 9/11.
And the first pigeons I’d seen since the attacks.
I watched from the sidewalk. Fairly close.
Not one of them moved.
Not one of them strayed from their post to peck at the crumbs of bread the crazy old woman down the street had left for them. And none of them feared me.
It was a sentry.
For a pigeon.
For some reason, the emotions of pigeons for one of their own suddenly brought it all home. I looked up and saw the dark cloud of soot that still hung over the city. My Mom had called again that day. Asking if I wanted to come home.
“You don’t have to move back home. Just come here and stay for a while.”
But at that moment, I was at one with the city.
And the pigeons. I bowed my head and stood with them. Perfectly still. I had hardly known anyone in New York. Until now, there hadn’t been anyone to mourn with.
Except the pigeons.
They didn’t fly away. They allowed me to stay. I stood with them in silence. In thought. Meditation.
I finally had the opportunity to mourn.
With pigeons.
To this day, it’s my strongest memory of 9-11.
It may not be as dramatic a story as escaping the Towers, walking across bridges, or pulling people out from under fallen debris.
But it’s my story.
It's the day I became a New Yorker.
First off, I had moved to New York a mere four months before the attacks. I hardly knew anyone in the city. I’d never even been inside the Twin Towers.
At the time, I was living in Midtown. Working two waitressing jobs. The night before, I’d worked late and been up even later writing. When the first plane hit the Twin Towers, I was sound asleep in my comfy bed.
It seems shocking to me that anyone could sleep thru a terror attack on their city. You’d think some inner intuitive sense would wake you up. Some evolutionary survival gene would jolt you from your sleep and you would instantly flee like a herd of caribou when a hungry lion appears out of the dust of the Sahara.
But apparently I have no such gene. I was sound asleep. All cozy in my bed while, just a few train stops away, thousands of people were going to their deaths.
I know I made coffee, because I remember lazily sitting with my coffee and my cigarette as I went online that morning to check my email. And I had a lot of emails that morning. WAY more than normal. The first one, from a friend back in Minneapolis was simply, “Are you okay?”
What? I took a drag off my cigarette and read the next one from another friend.
“Are you okay? Call me.”
It was surreal. I remembered a novel I’d read a few years earlier. “The Moustache” by Emmanuel Carree. A man wakes up one morning and decides to shave off his moustache. He turns to his wife and says, “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“My moustache? I got rid of it.”
“Moustache?” she replies. “You never had a moustache.”
Duh-duh-duuummmm!
The surreal feeling continued as I opened an email from my brother.
“Mom’s been trying to call you all morning, but she can’t get thru. She’s really worried. Can you call or email me to let us know you’re okay?”
What was going on?
I got up and turned on the TV. Every channel had their cameras focused on the same thing.
The Twin Towers in flames.
Half-asleep and still in my pajamas, it took a whole fifteen minutes for me to decipher what had happened. Even the news didn’t seem to know. The planes had already crashed into both towers. And I’m not sure if, by this time, the first one had fallen or not. It was all so strange and I wasn’t sure if I was watching repeats or live footage.
I was able to get on the phone and call my Mom.
I’m fine. I was sleeping. Don’t worry.
Honestly, I don’t know what everyone thought I might possibly be doing downtown that early in the morning, anyway. I was a waitress-slash-playwright. How people thought I’d managed to maneuver my playwrighting and coffee-pouring skills into a job in the financial sector, I have no idea. The only reason I might POSSIBLY be down there would have been if I’d gotten a job waiting tables at Windows on the World. And, even then, I NEVER worked breakfast shifts. The meager tips on eggs and toast had never been enough to drag me out of bed before the sun came up.
At some point, after I’d called some family and friends and returned some emails stating that I was “fine”, I remember seeing the second tower fall.
On TV. In my pajamas. With cinnamon infused coffee.
By this time, the news networks were reporting that this was no “accident”. New York City had been attacked. I was stunned. I’d only been here for four months. I’d barely unpacked. And I’d worked so hard just to get my two lousy waitress jobs. And now this?
Yes. I was thinking of myself. I had few friends here. Little emotional connection to the city. And one of my waiting tables jobs was in a comedy club. The other was in a tourist restaurant in Times Square. Suddenly, I saw a future with few people wanting to laugh and even fewer wanting to tour my fine city.
“Honey,” my Mom had said over the phone that morning, “why don’t you come home for awhile. I’ll send you a plane ticket.”
Under the circumstances, the last thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
I did spend the afternoon making calls to the few friends that I had here. One told me he just got home after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Another told me that he, too, was fine. He was also thinking it’d be the perfect night to try to pick up chicks. He’s a comic. I couldn’t really laugh, but I knew that humor was his way of dealing with the tragedy. Another friend who lived further downtown had to show her ID and proof of address just to get past police barricades.
And then there was the guy I was seeing. He flew a lot. To be honest, even before my concern about my jobs---I was concerned about him. Had he been on a plane that morning? Was he okay? Where the hell was he?
The way the phones were working that day, no one could call in to me, but I could call out. After my Mom, he was the first person I called.
He was fine. Not flying. At home. Not too far from where I was. Doing the same thing I was. Watching the news. Wondering what would happen next.
That morning, he’d seen both towers fall from the view in his penthouse apartment. Two years later, when his lease was up, he moved. He admitted that he hated the memory of looking out the window and watching it all unfold.
But that morning, he didn’t invite me over.
And I didn’t ask.
The relationship was still fairly new. And he’d lived in New York for twenty years. I knew he was going thru different emotions. He had a connection. I didn’t.
At least, those were the excuses I made. Looking back, I realize it was the moment I first mentally broke up with him. I was in a new city. Terrified. I just wanted to be held. And he wasn’t there. He hadn’t stepped up. If 9-11 was a relationship test, he failed.
I didn’t verbally break up with him. But I mentally did. I pulled back. I felt it. That barely perceptible drift that only the intimate can subliminally translate.
I knew no one who’d died in the towers. The whole thing was just too big to really comprehend.
What I could comprehend was being alone.
I made a cup of tea, vowed not to call him, and cried as I continued to watch the news. In one morning, I’d lost a relationship, two paying jobs, and the hope in my fabulous new city.
In my own way, within seconds, I’d also lost a life. I cried. But I cried for me. Poor healthy, alive and intact me.
Yes, I knew it in no way compared. But two gigantic towers full of people was just so big. So unreal. It was like something that happened in a foreign country---not a forty-five minute walk away.
Two hours later, I finally left my apartment. Police and Army personnel were everywhere. And a thick cloud of dust was in the air. Over the next few days, as the fires continued to burn, I could actually feel myself breathing in heavy soot when I went outside.
By this time, office workers from downtown had made their way to Midtown to catch their commutes home. Only a few were bleeding, but most all of them were covered in thick ash and soot. And most of them were in pairs---either finding a fellow co-worker to walk with or picking up a complete stranger along the way.
All were silent.
The silence that comes from trauma. But all of them had found someone to share it with. Even if it was very un-New York.
The usual manic energy of New Yorkers that I’d gotten used to was completely gone. No one was screaming “fuck you!” No one was yelling at their “homie’ across the street. It was a march of the zombies---only occasionally halted when a pair stopped in an open bar for a drink.
A few open bars posted “Happy Hour” specials.
There were plenty of takers.
Bits of burned paperwork from the Twin Towers even floated all the way to Midtown. Not a lot. But I remember seeing the bits and pieces. And the smoke.
Within days, hundreds of “missing” posters were plastered everywhere.
“John Smith. 38. 5 foot 10. 165 pounds. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Last seen in Tower Two.
Like their loved ones were lost neighborhood cats.
And the pigeons. They had all left Manhattan. Not a bird in sight except for a vacant lot near my corner.
I remember stopping at the sight.
A vacant lot where construction was about to take place.
On the lot, was a single dead pigeon.
But this single dead pigeon was surrounded by a dozen live pigeons standing guard over the body by forming an actual circle around it. Their feathered heads were bowed and they remained perfectly still. Not cooing. Not pecking at the ground for crumbs. Not walking around trying to mate with another pigeon.
Perfectly still. Like statues.
It was as if the pigeons were in mourning. I had never seen anything like it.
It was four days after 9/11.
And the first pigeons I’d seen since the attacks.
I watched from the sidewalk. Fairly close.
Not one of them moved.
Not one of them strayed from their post to peck at the crumbs of bread the crazy old woman down the street had left for them. And none of them feared me.
It was a sentry.
For a pigeon.
For some reason, the emotions of pigeons for one of their own suddenly brought it all home. I looked up and saw the dark cloud of soot that still hung over the city. My Mom had called again that day. Asking if I wanted to come home.
“You don’t have to move back home. Just come here and stay for a while.”
But at that moment, I was at one with the city.
And the pigeons. I bowed my head and stood with them. Perfectly still. I had hardly known anyone in New York. Until now, there hadn’t been anyone to mourn with.
Except the pigeons.
They didn’t fly away. They allowed me to stay. I stood with them in silence. In thought. Meditation.
I finally had the opportunity to mourn.
With pigeons.
To this day, it’s my strongest memory of 9-11.
It may not be as dramatic a story as escaping the Towers, walking across bridges, or pulling people out from under fallen debris.
But it’s my story.
It's the day I became a New Yorker.
1 comment:
Yes, this is the girl I soon came to love -- a recent New Yorker but better than most at being an old New Yorker from the start -- nb: she called them the Twin Towers.
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