do you hope to find new ways Of doing better than your worst

by mg at 06:10 PM on September 12, 2002

Yesterday was heavy.

I spent the morning just as I did last year. Home, alone, watching the news footage while listening to a rebroadcast of the Howard Stern show from a year ago. I didn’t feel any better, watching the names of those killed on that day scroll across every channel, turning up the sound when I could bear to, but I’m certainly not the type to sit in a church, or light candles. I’m sure I could have come up with a better way to commemorate, but it was my way.

I rolled into work at noon. The place was quite, the atmosphere somber, just as it was in the entire city. My workplace, and all of New York, bustles constantly, but the city was subdued. I can’t imagine anyone got any work done, but, at least here, where I’ve gotten used to water-cooler moments every hour or so, there wasn’t even much discussion or laughter. Everyone, I definitely, was walking around in a daze.

After work, I went downtown to meet up a couple friends I’ve known since high school. I went to Stuyvesant, just two blocks from the World Trade Center, on Chambers and West Streets. I spent as many hours sitting and talking, or playing Frisbee in the little esplanade between the school and the Hudson River as I did in classes. That was where we met last night.

No one brought a Frisbee to throw around, and I doubt it’s been so long I’ve tossed a disc around, I don’t think it’d have been very fun. Besides, although yesterday, like the September 11th 2001, was clear and bright, but a cliché, but true, a cool wind was blowing.

It was nice sitting with people I’d know for so long, who’d shared so many of the same experiences. We don’t really get to see each other very often, I hadn’t seen Margaret, who’d just flown in Michigan for the day, in 3 or 4 years. But when we do get together, it is always comfortable, as if no time had passed.

We sat in the park, two blocks from the World Trade Center, and talked about nothing. Literally nothing. In the shadow of what was no longer there, we didn’t mention the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden, the coming war in Iraq. We just enjoyed each other, revealed in each other’s company.

I’d been down to Ground Zero before. A couple weeks after and a couple times since. Each time I’ve seen it, I’ve been moved. If you want to read me say I cried the first time I went down there, I’ll say I did. I’ll probably well up with tears every time I go down there, every time I see the footage of those beautiful buildings falling, no matter how many years pass.

But, since last year, I’d never seen the World Trade Center from this angle. Heading back from the park, towards dinner at one of our high school hangouts, and walking the streets I’d walked every day for years, it hit me so much harder. Maybe someone new to New York wouldn’t feel it, but there was a visible hole in the world where the Towers used to be. Like an emotional black hole sucking pain, anger, this heartbreaking sadness and thoughts of revenge out of me. But, unlike the theoretical astronomical black hole, this one didn’t just take, but mixed my pain with the pain of thousands, millions, of others, and gave it back to me. I felt something different that moment then I had in any other moment in the past year.

I’ve never felt so overwhelmed in my entire life.

I had to turn away, and walk on toward dinner. We still didn’t mention the World Trade Center, instead, we drank, told stories, and shared plans for the future. I sort of wished we had, because although I know I’m not the only one feeling this way, it’d be nice to hear that out loud.