Another year has passed my friends. With the 10 year anniversary approaching I am reminded once again of our GWC huddle spot to reflect. I now work a few blocks away from the World Trade Center and I have to say I approach this anniversary nervously. NYC is on high alert due to a credible threat being out there that they will not share any details about.
This is mixed with the fact that when I have certain meetings I look out on the new building being built. As each week passes it continues to grow and this comforts me. Thank you to my GWC family for always being here, I will never take you for granted.
the discovery or some channel was showing what they are doing to rebuild on the world trade center site. I am really glad how thoughtful the design was. Keeping ground zero as an memorial. It is beautiful and considerate. of course I am no new yorker, but that’s how i feel.
I’ve seen two episodes of that show; its really good. It’s nice to see a new building going up there. And I think the memorial is beautiful. I’d like to take my son up there to see it some day.
Reg, I remember seeing your tweets on the anniversary this year and feeling shocked on your behalf–how incredible it must have been, how awful, to bring new life into the world on that day. Have you and your son talked much about that? Is it weird for him to feel celebratory and hard to enjoy his personal holiday when so many people around him experience September 11 as a deeply painful day?
I was a high school senior in 2001, living in South Florida. So the experience was nowhere near as deeply personal or scary or tragic as it was for many of you and many of my current coworkers. It was a half-day at school and my boyfriend (yeah, I know…) and I had plans to go out in the afternoon (actually to head to his house and have sex, let’s be honest… we were 17). We watched the TV in every class except last period, which I had with the boyfriend. It was Calc. Our teacher forced us to do the planned lesson because her son worked at the World Trade Center and she couldn’t reach him and she couldn’t deal with watching and not knowing.
After school let out, my mom called me to say I had to go home to watch my brother and sister–she didn’t want my brother to be alone in case he was scared. Boyfriend’s mother called him hysterically, yelling that Muslims had bombed Camp David and none of the Jews were safe (they were Jewish, and she was always rather high strung…). So we wnt our separate ways. My math teacher’s son lived.
To be honest, the discussions in my classes the next day have made a deeper impression on me than actually watching the tragedy unfold. I was one of the only students who had ever heard of the Taliban before, because I was the vice president of our school’s chapter of Amnesty International and we had learned about what the regime had done to take away women’s rights and ban girls from education. There were a few Muslim students in each of my classes because we had a somewhat large Pakistani immigrant population. You could tell they were deeply uncomfortable. No one bothered to either hide their racism about Arabs or ignorance about Islam. When I said in one of my classes that I was upset that we would be going to war so quickly, without much idea of what we needed to strike out against, my teacher flipped out and kicked me out of class, he was so disgusted with me. Forget the politics–that was 10 years ago and I was a kid. What scared me, actually terrified me, was how divisive everything felt. Everyone recalls the spirit of solidarity that united the U.S. and the world after 9/11, but, perhaps because of my experience the next day, it always felt hollow to me. That changed how I saw the world in as profound a way as the attacks themselves did.
The anniversary was really really tough for me this year. Maybe because it was 10 years, and there was so much media coverage. I think my son sensed it as well. He mentioned to me he wished his birthday was not on that day, which made me so sad.
This year was the first time that I think he really understood what happened. My husband and I have never hidden anything from him as to what happened on his birthday, but this year he asked a lot of questions. He watched the documentary that CBS airs every year- the one made by the French brothers about the Fire Department. I watch it every year as well. But I think it was good for us to sit down with him and watch the show together, and talk about it.
I don’t think it will ever get any easier for him, and I wonder how being born on that day will affect him as he grows up? We certainly still celebrate and have fun on his birthday- it’s a welcome diversion from the awful knot I feel in my stomach every year when I know the Anniversary is coming up. I still have trouble watching some of the footage. I missed a lot of it the first time, even though I had the TV on in the hospital.
Every year on this day I seem to find my way here. I read the accounts and remembrances and it brings everything right back. I wish I could put into words how I feel but words escape me. Nothing I write down feels right. There is nothing I can add here except love. Love for you all. Love for everyday since that terrible one. Be well, be safe. You’re in my heart.
God I hate this day. But I love it as well- Connor is 12 today. Every year this damn anniversary sneaks up on me, and I’m caught off guard by the well of emotion that comes with it. My son is in middle school now, almost a teenager. It’s hard to comprehend. In my mind’s eye he’s still 5 years old and starting Kindergarten.
I was able to visit the 9/11 Memorial and see the new tower this summer when I was in New York. It was the one thing I really needed to see when I was up there, and I’m glad I did it. It’s beautiful; but hard to be there. I almost felt like I was intruding, being on the site.
