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The Things They Left Behind - a comment
dear mr. king,
i am a born and raised new yorker. i grew up on bleecker street when the village was actually a haven of bohemia; i watched as soho changed from streets of abandoned, rat-infested factories, to the center of the art world, to the banal, homogenized mall it is today. apart from the 8 years spent at college and grad school, i have lived in manhattan all of my life. the apartment i grew up in is on the 30th floor of an apartment building with a view looking due south. although i was born in '67, i can't remember a time before the towers were there, framed in our living room windows. although our view of the statue of liberty and the river was slowly obscured by new development in the financial district, nothing could obscure those behemoths that was the world trade center. They were an absolute, unchanging, ever-present part of my childhood. (remember that New Yorker cartoon of the map of america, with manhattan in the front, and nothing really in the middle until you got to san fancisco? that perfectly describes how i saw the world as a child--only i didn't really even count california.)
i am one of few new yorkers who did not actually know anyone who died on 9/11, although i knew of people, friends of friends mostly. however, my best friend lived across the street and her story about how she and her 2 1/2 year old son got out of the area right after the first tower fell is absolutely harrowing. on september 11, i was scheduled to interview at a company (at their uptown office), which was canceled because their main office was in one of the towers. they lost 175 people that day. despite the decimation of a large part of their workforce, they hired me a week later. i did not replace anyone who died; i was hired to be a graphic designer at the uptown office. i did, however, work with a few people who had been there so i heard their stories and saw their eyes. this was the closest i came to actually knowing someone who died.
nevertheless, like many americans, 9/11 left a permanent scar on my heart. i still feel a physical ache when i look for, but don't see, the two most fixed landmarks of my life. often, i hear a voice in my head, like Mr. Yow, Git Down, only she's a 3-year old girl, stamping her foot and whining, "but i WANT them. i want them back RIGHT NOW. it's JUST. NOT. FAIR!" i would have voted to rebuild the towers exactly as they were before, not this liberty tower, or whatever they're calling it. 9/11 remains a searing pain, that will never dull, i think, for the rest of my life.
so i wanted to address one (small) comment you made in "The Things They Leave Behind." i sincerely appreciate the sensitive way you deal with the unspeakable horror of 9/11. and i appreciate your need to come to terms with the devastating effect it had on all of us, to heal or "get closure" (as the therapists say). however, you wrote that, "... by November of '01..The general (if unspoken) feeling was that such homemade homages were bumming out the tourists, who'd begun to creep back to Fun City." that was true, but not that quickly. although the city as a whole, its government, and its tourists, did begin to move on, it happened months later, not by the 4-6-ish weeks that you imply.
don't forget that after 9/11, the city then dealt with "terrorist" anthrax attacks (which now seem to have been perpetrated by an american nut job. who knew?). one time, during rush hour, the times square subway station was evacuated and the trains were shut down, because there was "white powder" on a platform. it turned out to be powdered sugar from a fallen donut (but it totally screwed up my day anyway). don't forget that ground zero was still an open grave that was totally closed off to everyone while workers sifted through the rubble for scraps of flesh. it was 2 months before my best friend could even get back into her apartment (which by then had a new "river view"--you can imagine why). in november, we were still in shock, walking gingerly like we had gut wounds and had to keep our exposed intestines from falling onto the sidewalk, constantly looking over our shoulders, jumping at every sound. by march, i would say that your description of the desire to play down the horror to appease the ground zero gawkers is more realistic.
i remember when, 6 months after, a network aired the documentary being filmed about the nyfd, and that caught the events of that day. i threw up when i saw it. but to me it was a sign that the city had truly moved on. i remember in july, when my best friend, (the one with the new "river view") threw my baby shower, (angrily) pushing through hordes of people with cameras, smiling and posing in front of the awful, heartbreaking, memorials that people had posted on the barriers around ground zero. i couldn't look out her window; i just wasn't able to look down into the pit. but that's just me. certainly, by then, the city was "back to normal".
that's it. that's all i wanted to say. i don't want to get on a soapbox about how no one who wasn't there on that day, in the city, seeing the smoke, the zombies walking, being one of them, could really understand the enormity of the pure, wordless, horror new york experienced on that day, because i don't really think that's true. despite the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked (and continue to do so) to the pit, like rubber-neckers at a 10 car pile-up, i know that all of america, not just new york, felt the hugeness the loss, the need to grieve, and finally, to heal. all of our lives were permanently changed on that day. and we all need to come to terms with it in our own ways. i guess writing this letter, challenging that one (minor) part of your story, needing to get the facts straight, (to appease the "Ms. Lemonpit, the Librarian" voice in my head; she's a real nit-picker, that one), is one of my ways of healing.
thanks for reading this,
catherine
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