OK, the title says "this day of remembrance" and obviously that was yesterday, but I started writing this yesterday, so that's where it really belongs and I don't want to change it, so here go the thoughts that took me two days to find the right words to express.
I have so many things to write to you about, yet since yesterday I’ve been struggling to verbalize my thoughts about 9/11. I have no authority, nor do I have any right to predicate on the matter since I was just a girl on the sidelines when it happened ten years ago. However, there is something about a day like yesterday that compels me to write.
Listening to the sounds of the memorial emanating from the TV in my living room, I could hear clearly all the names of those who died and the words of love and even the knot forming in the throat of the loved ones who are reading. And with each name mentioned I felt the same knot growing in my throat and tears welling up in my eyes.
I did not know the people whose names are mentioned, but I know that they were mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, fiancés who were engaged to be married, daughters and sons, and friends of so many people that are left behind today. They were young and old, some with full lives and plans and dreams ahead of them just like me, others having worked hard for many years looking forward to enjoying retirement and grandchildren one day. They were not at death's gate, yet. They were called early, before their time. But they were not called; they were forced along a death march that they could not have foreseen in their worst nightmares.
Ten years ago I was sitting in a classroom in New Jersey, in Physics class, when they turned on the TV and we saw the beginning of a day none of us will ever forget. It's strange because it's so clear in the way that it felt but so blurry because that day felt like it passed in a blur. My grandmother came to pick my sister and me up before the school administrators had even gotten the chance to decide how to react. They didn't want to let us go, but no one wins against my grandmother when she's protecting her family.
She took us to the Red Cross to give blood, but even at nine in the morning there were so many people who had already had the same idea that the blood bank didn't have a way to collect and store everyone's blood without it going bad, so we were sent away. I remember being disappointed. I was so close, yet so far away from the tragedy. I was safe while others were dying. I was 17, too young to go to New York and help, but just old enough to give blood. It would have been my first time giving blood and I remember thinking that I wanted so badly for them to take it so that I could help in some way.
We drove home and sat the rest of the morning in a strange trance as we watched people jump out of the towers and ultimately watched the second tower collapse. We saw survivors running through the streets trying to escape the giant cloud of rubble that inundating the area. It was like one of those old horror films where there's a giant blob expanding and taking over the city, destroying everything in its path, except that this was actually happening.
Then we saw firefighters, journalists, rescue workers, volunteers, combing over the remains of the Twin Towers trying to find survivors, then bodies. We saw people posting notes for loved ones, letting them know where they were and hoping that a picture and a scribbled note would lead to a reunion. Later, President Bush addressed the nation and assured us that "the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
And over the next few days we saw what America is made of. Americans everywhere expressed compassion and support for victims and loved ones and the resolve that we would not allow that kind of act to go unpunished. Those who could, helped. Those who couldn't, prayed. Everyone wept.
Here we are, ten years later. I have since moved to New York and it feels like I am a tiny part of the city and the city is a huge part of me. This is the city where I first became independent. This is the city that offered me my first internship, just a few steps away from Ground Zero, as a Clerk at the New York Board of Trade. This city has welcomed me in like it welcomed so many others before me. People allege that New Yorkers are not friendly and I really have to argue with that. New Yorkers might not be smiling all the time, they might be in a rush to get here or go there while putting up with millions of tourists that will stop walking with no warning in the middle of a crowded sidewalk as though there is nothing going on around them, BUT New Yorkers take care of each other.
I am now a Flight Attendant based in New York City and there isn’t a day that I am not alert and watching everyone and everything that happens on my plane. However, some of the flights that I feel safest on are the flights to and from New York, because I know that my New Yorkers won’t let anything strange go unnoticed or unaddressed. It’s just like what we see on the subway: “If you see something, say something.” And for that attitude, I am lucky that this city adopted me and I’ll be lucky if one day I have the right to call myself a New Yorker.
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