My 9/11

Summer wanes. In front of our house in Eagles Mere, for two years, we have displayed excerpts from from the Constitution, claiming our history in a moment when being American feels fraught. And I am thinking about the September day 25 years ago when being American felt different, as if we were all one…those days feel long ago.

In 2001, as the College Advisor at my NYC girls’ school, I told the the Seniors that unless they had been directly affected—lost a relative, for example—they could not write about 9/11 in their college essays. It would look exploitative, I explained, cheap.

25 years later, I wonder if I were too harsh. We were all directly affected, weren’t we? But on the Upper East Side, far North from Ground Zero, we pretended we were safe. My colleague, Sandy, couldn’t get into his apartment for months and months, and our friend, Martha, who taught in New Jersey, could not get home for several days. Liz, my dear friend at Laurel, told me later that her son had escaped from his office in one of the towers.

People older than I remember exactly where they were when they learned JFK had been shot; I remember the Reception Room at The Chapin School, tastefully furnished in shades of beige to welcome prospective parents, the small TV monitor typically playing videos of happy girls in green and yellow jumpers or plaid kilts.

As this quarter of a century anniversary approaches, I needed to organize all the fragments in my mind—vivid, immediate, and now 25 years old—into a list. Constraints, I tell my girls in English classes, sometimes help us be freer.

1.     Cobalt blue skies, which I noted as I walked the block from our apartment to my school.

2.     It was the first day of nursery school in Manhattan, young parents launching toddlers, strollers laden with gear. That’s one reason some who worked in the Towers were late to work that Tuesday and were spared.

3.     I walked from my office into the front hall, and MJ grabbed my arm. “Come in here,” she whispered. The Head of School and MJ and others were in the Reception Room, construction paper taped across the window that opened into the front hall. We stared at the television and watched the second plane enter the tower; we could not make sense of what we were seeing.

4.     We assembled the Upper School girls on the floor of Gym 2; Diane explained that two planes had flown into the Twin Towers and we did not yet know much. Several girls leapt up, weeping. Did their parents work in the Towers? Did we know? Adults followed to check on the girls.

5.     We decided it was best to keep the girls in classes.  Perhaps the little ones attended—we had not told them. Neither the older girls nor the grown ups could focus. We had no experience, no precendent, no idea what to do next.

6.     The Headmistress asked me to dismiss the Middle School. Parents were calling, saying they were on their way to pick up their girls. In those days, before the emergency plans all schools now practice faithfully, we did the best we could. I stood in the old gym, checking girls off when their parents arrived. Some had not phoned, so I sent runners all over the school to retrieve children.

My new TD, three days on the job, said, “I don’t know where that room is.” I gestured vaguely to the far side of the building. “Ask people until you find it.”

One mother arrived with the class list. “I’m taking these six girls,” she explained. “I’ve talked to their families.”  Grateful, I sent the children off with her.

One student’s mom walked over the Queensboro bridge to fetch her daughter—her mother, wearing a hijab.

7.  Finally, I reached , Seth, my husband, also a teacher. We agreed we would stay in our schools;

8.. Our own little daughters were safe at their school, but our babysitter, Joanne, frantic because her eldest daughter worked downtown, went to check on M & C, and the school sent them home with her.

9.  When we got finally got home, C. was clinging to our tall friend, Jay, who had just started a new job and could not get home to Brooklyn. The tiny TV in the den was playing the buildings’ collapse over and over again. I switched it off. M’s eyes were wide. They did not really understand. But they were both afraid.

10.  We took them out to the Promenade by the East River and looked South. Neighbors stood, silent, incredulous, looking downtown to where the towers had stood that morning; smoke billowed, the stench filled our nostrils. Someone started singing “We shall overcome.” We joined in, a tremulous, frightened choir. Would we?

11.  How quiet the city was for the next few days, weeks. No honking. No yelling. No cursing. People moved, muted, shocked automatons.

12.  Our Head asked me to plan the assembly for our return to school. I was glad to have a task. We sang “America, the Beautiful,” and when I heard the children sing “her alabaster cities undimmed by human tears,” I cried.

13.American Flags bloomed from balconies. We were one.

14.  Friends from around the country phoned. “Are you okay?” Their understanding of Manhattan geography was fragile. In bed, Seth and I whispered, trying to think who we knew who might have been there, who might have lost someone.

15.  On the fridge hung a permission slip for M’s third grade class trip later in September to Windows on the World.

16.  We went with our girls to a vigil—14th street? Washington Square Park. There were signs pasted on buildings, on fences, “Have you seen our sister?” or brother or husband. We thought survivors were disoriented, trying to get home to the people who loved them. 

17.  Seth went to donate blood; they didn’t need it. There was no one to give it to.

18.  Each day, we hoped for miracles—perhaps a whole clutch of people would be found? There were dogs sniffing. Few people were discovered alive.

19.  On Yom Kippur, no school again, we baked brownies and walked our girls down East 85th St. to NYFD22 . A tall firefighter knelt to accept the children’s gift. “I was off on Tuesday,” he offered, crying. The Yorkville 9 were what the papers called his buddies later called—they had raced straight down the FDR, getting there fast, first responders.

20.  The news showed President Bush in an elementary classroom, an aide whispering into his ear. I read each obituary in the NYT, feeling somehow obliged.  

21.  In my yoga studio, my eyes leaked during Shavasana.  The studio offered free classes, the instructors’ calm voices a balm.

22.  The girls didn’t want to go to sleep in their bedroom. When we asked why, they explained they were afraid Osama Bin Laden was hiding in their playhouse. When I asked why, M. said, blue eyes wide at 8, “Mom, they don’t know where he is.”  C., 6, holding my hand as we walked to the diner, asked if more planes would fall out of the sky.

23.  Several weeks later, in Pennsylvania, we went to pick up a rental car and saw cement barriers and National Guardsmen stationed at the tiny regional airport; by then, we were worrying about Anthrax. Of course, I knew about the flights that had crashed into the Pentagon and the field near Harrisburg, but this was the moment I understood that 9/11 had happened beyond Manhattan.

24.  Months later: we found an undeveloped roll of film from a disposable camera. In the photos, C is cavorting on the Staten Island Ferry, posing with my sunhat as we rounded the edge of Manhattan. I flipped through the prints, tense. I had snapped one photo right before the Towers and one right after the ferry had chugged past. The Twin Towers were nowhere, though they had been standing, beacons, that sunny Saturday before they fell.

25. Perhaps I was shaken enough to trade NYC for Cleveland for more than two decades. Now, we are New Yorkers again.