9-11-01: What I Remember

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just a few days away, it's impossible to watch the local news, listen to the radio, or read the paper without encountering something about that fateful day.

I don't much like hearing, reading, talking, or even thinking about that horrific event. I lived on 12th Street at the time, just a couple of miles from Ground Zero, so any reminder of the attack brings back awful memories. Thankfully none of my friends or family died that day, but living in the midst of such tragedy was still a terrible thing.

In those days if the weather was good, my habit was to walk to work, and on that fateful Tuesday morning, it was gorgeous: one of those late summer days with dry, crisp, clean-smelling air, a cloudless cobalt-blue sky, and a bright, cheery sun. The kind of weather that can't help but put you in a good mood.

I arrived at our nearly-empty office at around 9 a.m. As I walked to my cubicle, a young temp informed me that an airplane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers. I looked over her shoulder at the frightening images on her computer screen, then ran to my desk and logged onto CNN.com. What a horrible, tragic accident! I thought. It was obvious that all of the people on the airplane must be dead, as well as dozens (if not more) who were working on those tower floors that suffered a direct hit.

I was listening to reports of fires in the tower and trying to process the horror of it all, when the news flashed across my screen: Another airplane had just hit the second tower. What?! A shiver ran down my spine as I realized what this meant. One hit could've been an accident but not two. By this point the office was full, and everyone was freaking out.

We ran to the conference room, where the office's only TV was located, and watched the disturbing images being shown: two airplanes sticking out of the World Trade Center; black smoke billowing from the towers; soot-covered emergency personnel running in and out of the buildings; people high up in the towers, standing at broken windows and waving white towels (spare dress shirts?), desperate to be rescued from the fires licking at their backs.

Then the TV showed something tiny falling from a tower...down, down, down. Oh, no, no, NO, it's a person! I couldn't look anymore--I covered my eyes and cried.

Then the towers fell, one after another, and the enormity of the event truly hit me. What at first appeared to be a horrible and tragic accident was officially now an evil, hate-filled, world-changing, never-to-be-forgotten, add-it-to-the-textbooks, hellish, historical attack.

I took this photo from the roof of my building on 9-11.

I walked home later that day, showing my I.D. to get past the police barricade at 14th Street, went up to the roof of my building, and looked South. Smoke. After watching the images on TV for hours, seeing the actual thing was surreal.

I didn't think things could get any worse, but they did. I lived two blocks from St. Vincent's, which was designated the primary admitting hospital for those injured in the attacks. Extra doctors and nurses were summoned, extra supplies gathered, but hardly any wounded arrived. Empty stretchers awaited bodies that never materialized--bodies that, as it turned out, were vaporized.

But people with missing loved ones flocked to the hospital anyway, just in case. A huge chain-link fence outside the hospital was soon covered with MISSING!! notices: sheet after sheet of Xeroxed, 8-1/2 x 11 pages showing the smiling faces of people who, we were beginning to realize, were gone. Every single one of the hundreds of faces staring back at me as I walked by were blown to bits. Their bodies would never be found...their loved ones would never be able to close a casket, bury a body, or visit a gravestone.

The Xeroxed notices lingered for weeks. They got mangled a little, wrinkled and ripped by the rain, they faded. But still the smiling faces stared out at me. I couldn't stop thinking about them--they haunted me.

But the worst was the smell. The acrid, burning stench was there 24/7. I closed my windows but could still smell it. For weeks I went to bed with the smell in my nostrils and woke with it still there. It got to the point where I couldn't remember what regular air even smelled like. I rode the subway all the way uptown but the smell followed me. I think if I ever encounter that particular stench again, I'll throw up on the spot.

I don't remember how long the smell lasted, because my attention soon was diverted by the Anthrax scares that were popping up all over Manhattan. People were also talking about the "very real possibility" of a subway bombing. Things were weird and SCARY for a long time.

What the reflecting pools will look like

Now ten years have passed and it seems like a lifetime ago. I don't like to remember because then I begin to think, hey, if it happened once, it probably will again. But last weekend after spending time at a cool, new downtown playground, we drove past the WTC site at the request of my son, who is obsessed with skyscrapers. It pretty much looks like any other construction site--except way bigger--and I was surprised to not feel much about it.

I do want to go back once the reflecting pools are completed, however. I think they will be beautiful and meaningful, and hopefully they'll bring some peace to those who lost a loved one that day. We can only hope.