September 11th

I’ve been thinking all day of what to say that could possibly mean anything in the shadows of what happened five years ago.

Five years ago, I was pregnant with Monkey Man and was sitting at my desk when one of the assistants came in to tell me that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. Then Joey called to tell me that the second tower had been hit. I immediately ran up to the kitchen to join the rest of my office in watching the towers fall, one by one.

Being pregnant and already having heart rate and blood pressure issues, I tried to shelter myself from as much of the sadness as I could. I didn’t lose anyone that day but having grown up in the NY metro area, the Twin Towers were a significant part of my childhood and never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the horrors that unfolded that morning. I had visited the Towers numerous times, gazed at them from across the Hudson River, and dreamed that one day maybe I would get to work in the majestic buildings.

A little piece of my heart died that morning. I sat there, holding my belly and feeling my son squirm inside, and knew that life as I knew it had ended. Any lasting piece of the innocence of my childhood was gone.

For five years, I have said a little prayer on the anniversary for the victims and also for the survivors. This year was no different. But one thing that I have never done is watch any of the documentaries or news specials about 9/11. The pain of listening to the stories was too much.

Last night, I stumbled upon the CBS-broadcast documentary “9/11”. If you haven’t seen it, the filmmakers were documenting a “coming into manhood” story about a probationary fire fighter who was stationed blocks away from the World Trade Center, and ended up having a front-row seat to the horror. It was extremely well done and I could not tear myself away.

The image that will haunt me forever – the firefighters standing in the lobby of the South Tower, unable to communicate via radios, when suddenly they are jarred by what sound like explosions. They weren’t explosions. They were people jumping from the windows. One of the firefighters said, “I can’t imagine how bad it must’ve been up there if their best choice was to jump.”

I barely slept at all last night. I kept hearing the “explosions” over and over. And I only saw it on television, which pales sharply in comparison with those who lived it and those who died that day.

It’s kind of odd to think that our parents can remember exactly what they were doing the day that JFK was shot. And now our generation has its own defining moment…will we ever remember what life was like before 9/11?

I hope we do. But we should never, ever forget.