Hole in the Sky

I got off the ferry this evening and saw a group of school kids gathered on the pier.

They were musicians who were taking part in the local 9/11 memorial services.

As I walked by them, a man who had been riding on the ferry with me stopped and nodded in their direction.

"They don't look old enough to remember 9/11, do they?" he asked.

"No, they don't," I said.

It's 18 years today when the World Trade Center came crashing down to earth, when fundamentalist psychotics crashed hijacked jetliners into the iconic buildings, destroying thousands of lives and ripping right through this nation's heart.

All that time gone by since I stood with the crowd across the street from trade center, outside the Brooks Brothers store, and watched the North Tower burn, and ran with everyone else
when the second plane crash into the South Tower.

All those years, all those people.

It was my father's 80th birthday and I always tell people how beautiful the day was--how the sky was so clear, and the sun was so bright.

And the day gets even more beautiful as the years go by and my mind keeps polishing the memory and removing the imperfections.

I find myself thinking sometimes that maybe that beautiful day was a warning, that something so stunning could never last, and would inevitably be followed by something equally terrible.

But then there were also incredible acts of kindness, which I experienced firsthand as I walked over the Manhattan Bridge with thousands of others, and we were greeted by people, just ordinary, regular people, who offered us bottled water and use of their cell phones.

A total stranger gave me and other stranded R train riders a lift up Fourth Avenue in his van after the transit system was shut down. Nobody asked him to do that, nobody paid him or countless other people for their tremendous efforts that day.

The Way Home

Of course I thanked that man as I was getting out, but I didn't ask his name and I can't even begin to remember what he looked like. I'm sorry I didn't stay in touch with him. I hope the last 18 years have been good to him and wish him all the best for the future.

When New York started climbing out of the rubble, the city started a free ferry service from Sunset Park and every morning I rode to Wall Street with the smell of the burned towers lingering in the air. It was a toxic mix of all sorts of foul materials and things I don't want to think about that is still killing people to this day.

I couldn't get to the 9/11 ceremonies this morning, even though I work a few blocks away from Ground Zero. But I did manage to go back to that spot where I was standing 18 years ago to say a prayer for those who died and those they left behind.

The Brooks Brothers store is gone now, the property is vacant, like so many locations in the area and throughout the city, and the Freedom Tower stands across the street.

At lunch time I went to Our Lady of Victory Church on Pine Street, where my mother used to worship over 60 years ago, to receive Communion and listen to a visting Russian choral group.

I woke up this morning with my usual list of grievances all ready to go, and I've been doing my usual nightly rant at my computer's excruciatingly slow response time.

I should be thinking about all those lives that were so brutally snuffed out, all the dreams that never happened, all the connections that were never made; I should be thinking about the survivors, living every single day with this agony.

It's embarrassing to write about this when I think of the real losses that the 9/11 victims families suffered and I have to keep chiding myself, schmuck, you're doing this today, of all days? Haven't you learned anything?

Apparently not, but then I have plenty of company. Other than getting used to standing in long lines at airports, I don’t think we as a people have learned a goddamn thing from 9/11.

We’ve had wars, more terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and a sickening rise in hate crimes. We have completely forgotten what this is all about.

Those young musicians I saw tonight have no idea what the Manhattan skyline looked like back in 2001, when you could see the World Trade Center from the 69th Street pier. Of course there are photographs, but they can't convey the sense of loss, how the attacks tore a hole in the sky that will be never be filled no matter how many Freedom Towers we put up.

9/11 is history to them, just like Pearl Harbor, which was a real and terrible event to my parents, was history to me.

I have no reason to think we'll improve, but still I hope that those young people grow up in a much better world.

I hope they turn from hatred and bigotry and, if the worst does happen, I hope they respond like a total stranger in a van did 18 years ago today.