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What a surreal day that was. First, trying to wake up and make sense of the image on the TV, that of one of the world trade center towers engulfed in flames. Then, before I could even fully comprehend that, watching a plane fly into the other tower. I simply couldn't wrap my mind around it. Driving into work with my roommate and listening to Howard Stern, who was completely out of character and justifiably freaking out, saying " we don't know how much longer we will be able to broadcast." He said that another plane had hit the pentagon, possibly the white house or capitol building and it was then that I realized that this really was an attack.
But the thing that I will remember most about that day is sitting around our office, trying to get whatever new information we could, when my friend called to ask if I was watching the news. I told him I wasn't but was well-aware of what happened. He made a statement that made no sense to me until I was able to later get to a TV and confirm it for myself, that "the towers are gone". Huh? On fire, sure. Gone? What the hell does that mean?
And then, when I returned to a television and caught my first glimpse of my beloved NY Skyline, without the twin towers, it was as if I was looking at a different city. In my many excusions into the city as a child, those were the first things that we saw, the first inkling that we were getting close to this city. I would stare at them in awe and wonder the entire way. Gone?
Gone?
My next thought was towards an old friend, one who had contacted me a few weeks earlier through classmates.com . He had written to touch base and had told me that he was NYC firefighter now. Thinking of him, my heart sank. I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever hear from him again. I wrote to him but received no response. Finally, about 4 days later, I got an email from him, written from a person clearly exhausted beyond imagination. He had the day off on 9/11 and was home in Long Island. Immediately called into work, he had been on the job for 4 days straight, only stopping to sleep for a few moments here and there on the sidewalk. He told me that the television images didn't, couldn't, capture the horror he had witnessed. I've never been so happy to receive an email in my entire life.
And six years later, the horror has lessened but the anger has grown, especially knowing that there were warning signs that were ignored. That famous NY skyline still seems wrong every time I see it and it always will. That isn't the NY I remember.
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