Five years later

Today, a coworker asked our team where we were this day, five years ago. I responded with this:

My mom’s office was in the WTC and she was in there. She got out and is, for the most part, okay. That day was one of the most harrowing I have ever experienced… and I wasn’t even there. So many people I know were supposed to be there that day and were spared by some twist of chance. Of all the people I knew in the 22 years of my life spent in NYC, only one died that day, and she was a vague high school acquaintance.

I’ve been back to NYC since 2001. I drove past the site with its gaping hole like a sore gum after a tooth extraction, and I still have trouble believing it. I vividly remember walking through the atrium, going to the shops, riding the elevator as a child to one of the offices on the upper floors where my father held me steady as I stood on a railing- my forehead pressed against the glass, looking down at the city below. It’s sad that my wistfulness is about the place and not the people… but it was an icon of my existence in NYC. It was just concrete and steel, but concrete and steel is supposed to be permanent! It’s as easy to believe that Mt. Everest is no longer around as it is to wrap my mind around the fact that the World Trade Center is gone.

If you want to see a real tear-jerker, go see the Oliver Stone movie that just came out. I cried like a hysterical child.