I turned on the tv just a little while ago and children were reading the names of victims. This time the tears flowed immediately. It still hurts just as badly.
Nick is taking it hard. Two years ago he was eight. It wasn’t the loss of life that struck him as much as the loss of those buildings. But he was really affected by that. He built from paper, tape and markers twin towers of his own that he put by his bed.
In July we took the boys to NYC and stayed downtown, in what was once the towers’ shadows. Nick only wanted to see one thing in NY, The Site. So we went over, took lots of pictures, talked about the rebuilding.
The other day Nick and I were watching a show on the plans for the site. He’s disappointed they don’t plan to rebuild the towers.
Yesterday he put a picture of the towers up on his bedroom door. I think the human loss is hitting him now, 2 years later. He sees that it was not buildings falling that made this so horrible, and it’s a hard thing for him to come to terms with. And a hard thing for a mom to watch.
This is what I wrote when a friend last year asked about where I was that day:
I had just gotten my older two boys off to school, and I was getting ready to head to the bowling alley for the first day of our league season. Pat called from the road and told me a plane had hit one of the towers. He was driving on the NJ Turnpike heading to a client in Edgewater (right across the Hudson from NYC) and he could see flames and smoke. At the time the reports were saying a small plane, and we guessed it had somehow just gotten too close to the building. I turned on the TV and soon saw what to me looked like an explosion in Tower Two. A replay showed it was a plane.
Pat said he’d stay in touch and he was heading to his client. I gathered up my youngest and headed to the bowling alley. I dropped him in the playroom and then joined my teammates. It was the birthday of one of my teammates, and the birthday of the son of another. We had planned for a fun lunch afterwards.
The TVs over the bar were on. Some were glued to the sets. Others wouldn’t leave the pits by the lanes.
We weren’t sure what to do, so we bowled. We watched the towers go down, and we bowled. We heard about the Pentagon, about the crash in PA, and we kept bowling. We tried to joke that we were bowling against terrorism, trying to maintain normalcy when there was none there.
We heard all kinds of rumors about even more hijacked planes. I called my husband and asked him to cancel his plans to travel to Detroit the next day (we didn’t know yet that he wouldn’t have a choice.) He promised he would. I called my neighbor who’s husband worked in the towers’ shadows, left a message telling her I would be over soon. Some women couldn’t get ahold of their husbands who were in NYC, others wouldn’t get off the phones once they did reach them. Rumors started to spread that one woman’s husband was supposed to be at a meeting in Tower One. We weren’t sure we should keep bowling, but we didn’t know what else to do. Someone called the school, and they told her they recommended letting the kids stay for the day. We agreed, no reason to alarm the kids, but it was hard, most of us wanted our families close.
Afterwards I headed home and Pat arrived shortly after. They had asked everyone in the area of Edgewater where he had been to leave so they could keep the area clear to help evacuate the city.
We didn’t say a word but held each other for a very long time. I finally cried. So did he.
I headed to my neighbor’s house. She was sitting outside with her phone. Her husband had called, he was ok, but he had seen a lot. He was trying to get home. We looked up at the now empty clear blue sky, and wondered about those other planes we’d heard about (thankfully there were no other planes, but it was very scary to think that there were.) Her husband finally arrived home about 5:30pm.
The woman who’s husband was rumored to be in Tower One was in fact there, for a meeting with a client. Their home is diagonally across the road from mine, but I don’t know her well, just from bowling against her team occasionally, and I’d never met him. She put candle lights in the windows (they’re still there.) Hope was held out for a long time, especially since he was the former fire chief for our small town volunteer FD. If anyone could survive, he could. Sadly, he did not, they found his remains months later.
Three weeks before, Pat and I had spent a romantic weekend in NYC. We stayed in the Marriott that lay between the Twin Towers. We spent hours walking the area, watching a Latin band perform in the plaza, strolling over through Battery Park City and the Promenade. We went up to the observation deck, and laughed at the Broadway show posters along the wall of the escalator, because they were hung at a slant so they would fit the space. We had a delicious light dinner at The Greatest Bar On Earth, which sat at the top of Tower One. It was the best weekend I’d had in years, and we couldn’t wait to bring our three boys into NYC to see the World Trade Center.
Kathi & me on the observation deck, 1976
Now with these hands, I pray Lord
With these hands, I pray for the strength, Lord
With these hands, I pray for the faith, Lord
With these hands, I pray for your love, Lord
Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up!
-Bruce Springsteen The Rising