Me, my family and the WTC
Sep. 11th, 2003 06:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidi1. The first time I went to Windows on the World, I was 6 or 7, and as you walked to the restaurant from the elevator, you passed these amazing pieces of quartz - huge, glittery and sparkling. When I was 18 and working for CNBC, I took my mother to lunch there during a break from our studio at the American Stock Exchange, and I felt as grownup as could be.
2. The last time I went to Windows on the World was for the Stroock holiday party in 1997 - it was in the "party" rooms the floor below, and all the under-40's in my department took a side trip to The Greatest Bar on Earth, which was part of Windows at that point, because...
3. Earlier that year, in our representation of Ringling Bros, we'd sued the owners/operators of Windows, alleging trademark infringement by the bar name on the Ringling GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH mark. Nonetheless, they had great cosmopolitans. And it was so rainy/snowy outside that you couldn't see through the windows, and we joked that they'd really sent us into the basement, and there was nothing on that floor at all.
4. The last time a member of my family went to Windows was September 1, 2001, not the Sunday before, but the Sunday before that. My adopted brother went - it was his first time there and his first time in a building that went up so high, and it was a gorgeous night and he talked about it on the flight home - every little detail.
5. My husband's father was an engineer with one of the companies that designed the towers. And in the mid-80s, my husband worked with one of the construction crews that was fixing the top of one of the buildings. He was tethered to the roof, thousands of feet in the air, for a summer. And he still can't really describe it.
6. The summer that I was 18, I passed through the trade center every day, en route to the studio. And the spring after law school, when I worked for American Express in the World Financial Center, I did the same. And the following winter, when I started with Stroock, I passed through it occasionally in the afternoon, if I could leave the office at a reasonable hour and head up to Aaron's at One Penn Plaza. And when you're walking to the subway, from that direction, you have to pass the Warner Bros store and a Mrs Fields cookies and a bookstore that always had a huge variety and high prices. And the drugstore across from the Sbarro's. And the amazing Hudson Newstands, where you could always find every magazine you wanted. And across the street is a Burger King, which, the last time I went to look at the pit, was still standing and being used as a police station.
7. I still have the email from my friend Sue, which she sent via Blackberry between the time the planes hit and the time the first tower went down, as she was fleeing uptown. And the one from my friend Cori, who was five months pregnant at the time, which she sent as soon as she got home from Capitol Hill. And the one from Aaron's classmate, telling us that a former colleague of both his and mine (his at a law firm, mine while I was with the NY Times) had lost her husband, who'd been a few years ahead of Aaron at their college. And the one from my former secretary - she was 64 when she ran from the falling debris, and she retired three months later.
8. And yesterday, I reread the posts we made on FA and HPfGU during and after the attacks - during the terror (I don't think there's an "after" for that, even now, not completely). It's slipping away, the sheer panic I felt while waiting in front of my office for my mum to pick me up - it was the one day I didn't have my car, because someone had smashed the window the day before and it was waiting in my driveway, waiting to be repaired. And the repairman still showed up, midafternoon on September 11.
I know how lucky I am, because I didn't lose anyone personally - I have friends who lost cousins, teachers, friends, spouses. I know of people who lost children. My friends and family in the military are all still safe - at the moment.
But I listened to - of all things - Mambo Number Five on the radio yesterday, from 1999. And I remembered the summer of 1999, when I had a newborn, and the summer of 2000, when I flew through Logan Airport because I didn't want to fly to Bangor when we were visiting relatives in Maine. And September 3, 2001, when I flew out of La Guardia with my parents, my grandmothers, my sister and her husband, my brother, my husband and my son, basking in the wonderfulness of New York City, with my expectation that I'd be coming back five weeks later for a wedding of one of my oldest friends.
And two years on, I still don't think that there's any way that we'll ever feel such innocence again. Not in my lifetime, at least.
edited to add: On September 10, FictionAlley launched an LJ for the mods to collectively use, before we had our own codes, and before LJ was even a big thing in/for the fandom. You can read a bunch of the posts here and here.
and
My friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laughingirl posted this today:
She's absolutely right - this day is different. More hugs, more pauses at unexpected moments, and probably a national - nay, possibly even an international daily average of more tears. But I'm still going to lunch withtabithajones and I'm still playing raquetball tonight, and I'm still going to go to NYC again as soon as I can. I miss it so much.
2. The last time I went to Windows on the World was for the Stroock holiday party in 1997 - it was in the "party" rooms the floor below, and all the under-40's in my department took a side trip to The Greatest Bar on Earth, which was part of Windows at that point, because...
3. Earlier that year, in our representation of Ringling Bros, we'd sued the owners/operators of Windows, alleging trademark infringement by the bar name on the Ringling GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH mark. Nonetheless, they had great cosmopolitans. And it was so rainy/snowy outside that you couldn't see through the windows, and we joked that they'd really sent us into the basement, and there was nothing on that floor at all.
4. The last time a member of my family went to Windows was September 1, 2001, not the Sunday before, but the Sunday before that. My adopted brother went - it was his first time there and his first time in a building that went up so high, and it was a gorgeous night and he talked about it on the flight home - every little detail.
5. My husband's father was an engineer with one of the companies that designed the towers. And in the mid-80s, my husband worked with one of the construction crews that was fixing the top of one of the buildings. He was tethered to the roof, thousands of feet in the air, for a summer. And he still can't really describe it.
6. The summer that I was 18, I passed through the trade center every day, en route to the studio. And the spring after law school, when I worked for American Express in the World Financial Center, I did the same. And the following winter, when I started with Stroock, I passed through it occasionally in the afternoon, if I could leave the office at a reasonable hour and head up to Aaron's at One Penn Plaza. And when you're walking to the subway, from that direction, you have to pass the Warner Bros store and a Mrs Fields cookies and a bookstore that always had a huge variety and high prices. And the drugstore across from the Sbarro's. And the amazing Hudson Newstands, where you could always find every magazine you wanted. And across the street is a Burger King, which, the last time I went to look at the pit, was still standing and being used as a police station.
7. I still have the email from my friend Sue, which she sent via Blackberry between the time the planes hit and the time the first tower went down, as she was fleeing uptown. And the one from my friend Cori, who was five months pregnant at the time, which she sent as soon as she got home from Capitol Hill. And the one from Aaron's classmate, telling us that a former colleague of both his and mine (his at a law firm, mine while I was with the NY Times) had lost her husband, who'd been a few years ahead of Aaron at their college. And the one from my former secretary - she was 64 when she ran from the falling debris, and she retired three months later.
8. And yesterday, I reread the posts we made on FA and HPfGU during and after the attacks - during the terror (I don't think there's an "after" for that, even now, not completely). It's slipping away, the sheer panic I felt while waiting in front of my office for my mum to pick me up - it was the one day I didn't have my car, because someone had smashed the window the day before and it was waiting in my driveway, waiting to be repaired. And the repairman still showed up, midafternoon on September 11.
I know how lucky I am, because I didn't lose anyone personally - I have friends who lost cousins, teachers, friends, spouses. I know of people who lost children. My friends and family in the military are all still safe - at the moment.
But I listened to - of all things - Mambo Number Five on the radio yesterday, from 1999. And I remembered the summer of 1999, when I had a newborn, and the summer of 2000, when I flew through Logan Airport because I didn't want to fly to Bangor when we were visiting relatives in Maine. And September 3, 2001, when I flew out of La Guardia with my parents, my grandmothers, my sister and her husband, my brother, my husband and my son, basking in the wonderfulness of New York City, with my expectation that I'd be coming back five weeks later for a wedding of one of my oldest friends.
And two years on, I still don't think that there's any way that we'll ever feel such innocence again. Not in my lifetime, at least.
edited to add: On September 10, FictionAlley launched an LJ for the mods to collectively use, before we had our own codes, and before LJ was even a big thing in/for the fandom. You can read a bunch of the posts here and here.
and
My friend
laughingirl posted this today:This day will always be different from other days... and I'll cry for another reason the year I wake up and *don't* instantly think of it. But, it's also got to be the same as other days... because if we let them make a perfect fall day feel foreboding instead of optimistic, I'm not sure where that leaves us.
She's absolutely right - this day is different. More hugs, more pauses at unexpected moments, and probably a national - nay, possibly even an international daily average of more tears. But I'm still going to lunch with
tabithajones and I'm still playing raquetball tonight, and I'm still going to go to NYC again as soon as I can. I miss it so much.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
You moved me to tears
Date: 2003-09-11 06:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-11 07:21 am (UTC)My uncle worked for a law firm that occupied several floors of tower two. He has worked in London for years - but I can clearly remember how worried I was that he was on business in New York two years ago today. He wasn't. Miraculously his company lost only one person. One too many - but thankfully no more.
*hugs everyone*
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-11 02:28 pm (UTC)It just reminds me of when my father helped his sister move from San Francisco to NYC, in an apartment about 1/4 a mile from the WTC. He left the week before the attacks to go to San Francisco, and returned home on Sunday, September 9. Two days before. I still shudder to think about what might have happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-12 03:46 am (UTC)I read your entry and then later on the news there was a bit about the anniversary. I looked at the minute silence (I think) footage and saw a Burger King sign on a wall. I didn't have any direct links with the attacks but seeing that detail made me stop and think for a while because I remembered this post...