While my family was relatively "safe" in Michigan during 9/11, nobody felt that way. The world was upended, we were under attack and didn't know where or when the next hit would come. Sadly, I haven't felt safe since. We were around for the underwear bomber, too many mass shootings to count, and the attempted kidnapping of our governor. There is NO place "safe" and 9/11 was the beginning of my realization of that. I can't fathom what it was like to be in New York breathing in the air that contained your neighbors. My brain can't handle what you must feel.
Those who experienced the 9/11 trauma firsthand will not be gone soon: children who lived in the area and went to school there are facing decades of life.
Your story is poignant, moving. I left my journalist pen behind years ago, now using a poet’s brush, trying to catch the “more” of life, behind and beneath the mountain of facts, sometimes feeling like debris that I leave in my wake of living. In my 70th year, I’m still seeking to make sense of it all....but your words call me back to a younger, tho not wiser, self.
Thanks for this; I am up in Maine, so no direct memories are possible, up here. I remember sitting at a cafe, the day after, with my rehearsal-scene partner, and watching the fire trucks and police cars turning right, to head downtown, to the scene of the terrible smoky crime.
While my family was relatively "safe" in Michigan during 9/11, nobody felt that way. The world was upended, we were under attack and didn't know where or when the next hit would come. Sadly, I haven't felt safe since. We were around for the underwear bomber, too many mass shootings to count, and the attempted kidnapping of our governor. There is NO place "safe" and 9/11 was the beginning of my realization of that. I can't fathom what it was like to be in New York breathing in the air that contained your neighbors. My brain can't handle what you must feel.
Please keep telling the story. It matters.
Those who experienced the 9/11 trauma firsthand will not be gone soon: children who lived in the area and went to school there are facing decades of life.
Your story is poignant, moving. I left my journalist pen behind years ago, now using a poet’s brush, trying to catch the “more” of life, behind and beneath the mountain of facts, sometimes feeling like debris that I leave in my wake of living. In my 70th year, I’m still seeking to make sense of it all....but your words call me back to a younger, tho not wiser, self.
Thanks for this; I am up in Maine, so no direct memories are possible, up here. I remember sitting at a cafe, the day after, with my rehearsal-scene partner, and watching the fire trucks and police cars turning right, to head downtown, to the scene of the terrible smoky crime.