#532...on crisp blue skies...

The sky is as blue today as it was four years ago - but the horror of that day is still no less horrific.

9-11 remembered - a personal pilgrimage.   Full moon. (Blue moon actually) November 30, 2001.
    
"So profoundly sad." 
    
     Three words that kept going through my mind and heart over and over.  Simply, I was not prepared to be as moved again as I was while watching the terror events unfold as they happened in the early morning hours of September 11. 

     We arrived at about 1 p.m., maybe it was 1:30 p.m., to a hauntingly quiet and devastated Ground Zero, now a huge gaping hole of twisted steel and pulvertized concrete; still surreal, so completely unbelievable.           

     People were scattered in pockets here and there, some quietly going about their work, other people simply there, as we were, to experience it.  To burn it into our memories, to notice the small and hideous details, to try in some small way to comprehend the incomprehensible. 

     All around me, and in every part of town, New Yorkers were in pain; yet bore their pain openly with strength, and dignity and quiet resolve.  Standing as sentinels over their lost children, over their lost structures, over their lost skyline.  And still, we (technically outsiders) were welcomed into their home and greeted with kindness and tolerance.  (I wondered if they realize we are as proud of their city as they are.)
  
     I looked closely at the blend of people around me.  Every face was different, every nationality was present, but together we shared a common feeling of loss, and tragedy, and pain.  
    
     Oh, there were other emotions too, embarrassing, ugly, and unwanted ones in this, now holy place.  It felt dirty and wrong to be feeling anything other than sadness here.  But the more I absorbed first hand, the hugeness of this obscenity before me and allowed the senselessness of this tragedy to seep into me; I couldn't help but become angry and crave immediate revenge.

     And justice. 

     And punishment.

     (Damn - you just do not use innocent people as guided missiles!)

     We walked around and saw an entire street covered with memorials to those lives lost, and as of yet, unidentified or recovered bodies some two and a half months later...so thorough was their destruction.

    Mountains of trinkets and teddy bears and photographs and prayers and candles and flowers and love notes...Oh God, and look, a child's desperate plea to the Virgin Mary, his carefully framed and documented hopes for the return of his lost young father - a calendar with the words "Said 200 Hail Mary's for Daddy" hand scribbled inside each and every day for the month of October.

     And policemen quietly standing guard.

     And the firemen continuing the recovery efforts.

     And workers clearing the rubble.

     And the people's tears.

     And the small choking gasps.

     And the held back sobs.

     And the overwhelming and heavy quiet that hung in the air.  As thick and heavy as the stench of the still smoldering fires and cement dust, and jet fuel, and probably dead bodies.
 
     I understand evilness today.  I believe now.
 
     An overcast day, mild in temperament, unusual for November, but then, nothing about this place is usual anymore.  Huge neighboring buildings were draped in shrouds of black netting, I suppose to contain the dust, but more importantly, to contain the souls and the battle scars of a nation at war.

     No warning.

     One building, mortally wounded, held as its shrapnel, a massive piece of the towers, a hundred or more foot section, all twisted and mangled.  Hideously jutting out of its side, halted only by the compacted debris as it literally tried to cleave the building in two.

     And the steam shovels droned on, and the cranes raked away debris.  And the quiet calmed and soothed us.

     Two men up over there to the right, on scaffolding some twenty stories high, intently power-washing a building, dressed in yellow slickers and yellow hard hats - easy to find against the black soot that covered the entire skyscraper...

     My husband's angered whisper:  "We should bring every one of those bastards here and say, "Here. Now clean it up. Clean every last damn bit of it up."  I watched as my daughter collected a long piece of yellow police tape that was blowing along the sidewalk.  I fought to hold my tears in check.

     Silently, respectfully, we watched the whole procession of the victim's families, a full city block long, four abreast in line, walk in complete silence, along and past the memorials and into the restricted site - an area reserved for "Authorized Personnel Only."
 
     "Your pain is our pain too,"  I told a grieving widow with my eyes.  Together we blinked our tears away.  And high above us all, draped from yet another wounded building, hung Old Glory - big and bright and strong; unashamed and unafraid - a huge comfort, actually.

     And there on the ground, under a bush, near a cobblestone curb, a fireman's wrench, still covered with terror dust.  We brought it home for safekeeping.  It felt wrong to leave it there, unattended and alone, open to the elements.  I wondered whose hands had once curled around it....

     I made my children take notice of every detail that day, and reminded them that this was their "Pearl Harbor," not yet sanitized and memorialized, as time would undoubtedly do.  But this, their Pearl Harbor, is open, and bleeding and dirty and new.

     And they did study, thoroughly and carefully, the sight before them.  I was almost afraid to meet their eyes, or answer their questions.  For somehow I felt that we, as a nation, had let all of our children down as their protectors, by not guarding our shores better.  Ashamed that this now, is part of their young lives.  And I grieved the loss of their  innocence, taken from them suddenly and without warning.

     Ashamed too, that as a nation, patriotism had somehow become unfashionable.

     That is not a good lesson to teach our children.

     Well, no more.  At least not in this house.

~floralilia
  11-30-01