We all have our stories: before 9/11 I remember my parents talking about where they were when Kennedy was shot: certain places on their university campuses. Now we have a new etching: the place we were, the way it felt, and the things we did in the moments after we saw things we never thought we would see in our lifetime.
I was living in Uptown: near Downtown Dallas. I didn't know that the choices I made in September 2001 would haunt me, likely forever. It can't be unseen. My memory of 9/11 is a relationship I should not have been in: the black sheep brother of a best friend: reckless, rebellious, ridiculous. That's where I was, or rather he was with me. We woke that morning to strong coffee and shock: quickly realizing the things that really mattered: being with the ones we loved. And that wasn't each other.
Awkward--both aspects of that fall morning in Dallas, when the planes stopped flying--both memories I would rather forget.
But I can't: they are tied together forever. This person left my house both immediately and permanently. At least I like to remember it that way. In his wake were two precious friendships-and they have never come back to me. The risk wasn't worth it. But for a few moments that morning, 9/11 has him in the picture: both of us standing in front of a big box television crying and word-less. We knew in that moment of truth on television, our fake relationship was over. He gathered up his things and left.
I couldn't go to work: the museum and parts of downtown were closed. I drove to church with a few hundred other people: we were all dressed for work. Hoping for normal. I sat in the Memorial Chapel at the Church of the Incarnation: looking at life, and death and choices.
Like so many of us, 9/11 had a connection point beyond the television for me. In 1998, three years prior, I lived for a summer in New York at 110 Liberty Street, just across the street from the World Trade Centers. I walked that morning path: past the Brooks Brothers that was the temporary morgue, I rode the trains into the same station, I spoke to the doormen, and the guy at the coffee stand. I knew the families who lived in the buildings with the glass windows blown out. I knew the rhythms too well.
In the church that day I prayed for all of them: the doormen, the coffee-seller, the church family at Trinity Wall Street, the family I lived with. I prayed they were all somewhere else in that moment: already at pre-school, off in the country, not quite at the door yet. I wanted a different outcome for all of us. I wanted all of us to be somewhere else in that moment. I still do.
And so we created new rhythms that day. We learned what it was like to walk on the Katy Trail without airplanes. We finally found our New York friends and told them we loved them.
I broke up with my boyfriend.
I created a different life: one with a little more purpose that it had on September 10th. Wisdom? Reality? Somewhere in between, but the good news, inside all of this bad news is that we came together as a nation and found a deeper kind of love: real love.
I was living in Uptown: near Downtown Dallas. I didn't know that the choices I made in September 2001 would haunt me, likely forever. It can't be unseen. My memory of 9/11 is a relationship I should not have been in: the black sheep brother of a best friend: reckless, rebellious, ridiculous. That's where I was, or rather he was with me. We woke that morning to strong coffee and shock: quickly realizing the things that really mattered: being with the ones we loved. And that wasn't each other.
Awkward--both aspects of that fall morning in Dallas, when the planes stopped flying--both memories I would rather forget.
But I can't: they are tied together forever. This person left my house both immediately and permanently. At least I like to remember it that way. In his wake were two precious friendships-and they have never come back to me. The risk wasn't worth it. But for a few moments that morning, 9/11 has him in the picture: both of us standing in front of a big box television crying and word-less. We knew in that moment of truth on television, our fake relationship was over. He gathered up his things and left.
I couldn't go to work: the museum and parts of downtown were closed. I drove to church with a few hundred other people: we were all dressed for work. Hoping for normal. I sat in the Memorial Chapel at the Church of the Incarnation: looking at life, and death and choices.
Like so many of us, 9/11 had a connection point beyond the television for me. In 1998, three years prior, I lived for a summer in New York at 110 Liberty Street, just across the street from the World Trade Centers. I walked that morning path: past the Brooks Brothers that was the temporary morgue, I rode the trains into the same station, I spoke to the doormen, and the guy at the coffee stand. I knew the families who lived in the buildings with the glass windows blown out. I knew the rhythms too well.
In the church that day I prayed for all of them: the doormen, the coffee-seller, the church family at Trinity Wall Street, the family I lived with. I prayed they were all somewhere else in that moment: already at pre-school, off in the country, not quite at the door yet. I wanted a different outcome for all of us. I wanted all of us to be somewhere else in that moment. I still do.
And so we created new rhythms that day. We learned what it was like to walk on the Katy Trail without airplanes. We finally found our New York friends and told them we loved them.
I broke up with my boyfriend.
I created a different life: one with a little more purpose that it had on September 10th. Wisdom? Reality? Somewhere in between, but the good news, inside all of this bad news is that we came together as a nation and found a deeper kind of love: real love.
❤️
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