Remembering in Silence

The first time I visited New York City, I was nineteen. I was with my parents and we went around on one of those tourist buses and saw all the sights. I loved Striver's Row in Harlem and I adored Chinatown. I laughed with the rest of the bus as the tour guide loving referred to the Twin Towers as the "washer and dryer".

As my family left NYC for the D.C. area, I watched that washer and dryer from the back window of our car. I watched till the buildings disappeared from view. I promised myself then and there that I was going to move to New York one day and come back for a visit.

I kept my promise and moved to New York six years later. I remember thinking back then how architecturally inferior the Twin Towers were to 99% of the buildings in the Chicago Loop. But there was something captivating about them, something beautiful that drew me there. I liked to go over to the buildings, stand at the bottom and just stare up, particularly at night. It made me a bit dizzy but I got a kick out of doing that.

I only went once to the observation deck of Two World Trade Center. I'll never forget the feel of the breeze on my face as I gazed out over New York City.

That September morning six years ago, I got up around 5:00. I took a shower, got dressed, made my lunch and got my stuff ready to go to work. I got my almost nine month-old baby up, changed him and dressed him. I remember sitting on the couch to nurse him and I flipped to the local news stations to see what was happening in the world.

I was just shocked by what I was seeing. I couldn't believe a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I figured one of the pilots must have had a heart attack or been drunk. I had no sense of possibility that anyone would survive such a horrible fire. I remember thinking that there was no way for firefighters to be able to put such a huge blaze out.

I think I'd only turned on the TV a couple of minutes before the second plane hit. And when that second plane did hit...I will never forget that sick, horrible feeling.

Matt Lauer and Katie Couric stopped speculating about whether air traffic controllers had screwed up. I yelled for my husband to come out of the bathroom. I called my mother and told her to turn on the TV. Then I remembered that my friend Mikelle was flying to NYC that morning. I called her cell phone over and over again and she finally answered. Her plane was sitting on the runway at LAX waiting for takeoff. I remember telling her what was happening and screaming that she needed to get off that damn plane no matter what. Then I called my boss who told me she wanted me to come into work regardless.

She actually told me, "It's not like it's going on here in LA."

I refused to come in. I was terrified and absolutely convinced that something was going to happen in LA. I started talking to my husband about how we were going to get out of the city given LA traffic. I was really certain those were the last moments of our lives together. The world seemed out of control. Something had happened at the Pentagon, but it seemed unclear what it was. The news people seemed so calm, so controlled. I didn't understand how Tom Brokaw was managing to keep his voice so even.

And then Two World Trade Center, the building I'd once stood on top of, came down.

I still can't explain what I felt in the moments after I saw that happening. I know that I cried a lot but I don't know what I said, what I did. I do know that by the time Tower One came down, almost a half hour later, I felt numb with grief. The loss of life, the loss of the buildings...the fruits of mankind's disunity were manifesting themselves and it hurt so much.

In the hours after the collapse of the second tower, I continued to watch the news. I prayed. I talked to relatives around the country and friends here in LA. I watched my baby crawl around on the floor. He was smiling and laughing, completely oblivious to the tragedy that had taken place.

Now, six years later, that baby is now a healthy 1st grader. Sometimes he tells me he wants to be an airline pilot, but mostly, he wants to be a pediatrician.

I also think about how after the attacks George Bush told us all that we should go about our lives as usual. He told us to go shopping. Essentially, he told us to embrace the religion of materialism and shut off our brains, our hearts, our very souls.

Today as I ventured around LA, I heard lots of people talking about Britney Spears' performance on Sunday night's MTV Video Music Awards. Not one person mentioned anything to me at all about today being the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. In fact, this morning, I thought out loud to a woman at my son's school. I told her I couldn't believe it's been six years and I wondered if the teachers were going to do anything special in the classrooms with the kids."

The woman asked me, "Why would they do anything special today?"

I felt simultaneously sheepish and angry as I said, "Because it's September 11th."

She merely replied, "Oh, yeah, that's right."

Earlier this evening, I found myself thinking again about that feeling of being on top of the observation deck of Two World Trade Center. None of us will ever do that again. But, about a year ago, while poking around on YouTube, I came across a promo video that Depeche Mode shot in 1990 for the song "Enjoy the Silence". They filmed it on that observation deck. It makes me cry, but it helps me remember what once was.



Truly, there is too much pain, too much lost beauty in our world.