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We were excited.  Tom and I had scored tickets to the Red Sox/Yankees game.  Roger Clemens was starting and going for his 20th win of the year against their greatest rivals.  We found our seats.  We got our snacks.  I’m sure I had smuggled in some sunflower seeds.  Unfortunately, the game was postponed due to a great storm and its rain.  It was September 10, 2001.

That’s what made the next day’s sky the bluest that I have ever seen.

In the days before smartphones, I awoke in my TV-less apartment the next morning around 10 AM.  Kristina was still sleeping.  I was late for moving my car for street cleaning, and didn’t want another ticket.  I threw on some clothes and went outside.  I was baffled as to why so many others hadn’t moved their cars.  What day is it?  Yeah, it’s Tuesday.  Is it a holiday?  On Tuesday?  Huh.

A man talked on the phone as he crossed the street.  Somehow I registered him saying, “…and they took one to Pennsylvania…” I didn’t realize exactly what I had heard until 15 minutes later.

I came back inside and started brewing some coffee.  I turned on my computer.   I checked my email.  There was a message from Dwight in Las Vegas.  The Subject was “Bomb.”  It was a one-line email that asked me to confirm that I was all right.  Huh?  Yes.  What is happening?

I opened up my internet browser to my Yahoo home page.  I got shivers and felt like I was going to puke.  I felt like my house had gotten robbed or there was a fire or I had happened upon a terrible car accident and I didn’t know what to do.  I awoke Kristina with a mixture of gasps and groans and whimpers and “No.  No.  No.”  She had a return ticket to Montana that afternoon.  I printed the Yahoo home page and came into the room.  She asked me what was wrong.  I was trembling as I showed her the page.

“You’re not going anywhere today.”

I checked my cell phone, tried to check voicemails, make a call.  Nothing was working.

We walked out of my apartment on Woodycrest Avenue.  I finally looked 14 miles south, onto the island of Manhattan.  It had suffered a grave wound and was bleeding into the sky.

There were no cars or trucks or buses.  The white noise and hum of the city were gone.  In their place was a heavy, sad, scary, singular silence.

There were police cars parked around Yankee Stadium.  A U.S. soldier was posted near its front gates, machine gun slung over his shoulder.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“No one knows,” he said.  He was serious and he was scared.

We I went to the closest bar we could find.  We joined a quiet group of people inside, gathered around the television, gazing upward at this strange box showing us the most baffling moving pictures we had ever seen.  Over and over, the planes hit, the towers fell, and the people screamed and ran.

I don’t know how much time we spent in that bar, but at some point, we put our feet back on the ground and started moving again.  We did what any rational people would do when confronted by such profound irrationality.  We went to a diner and ate donuts.  Everything had changed.  Nothing made sense.  Except those donuts.  On any other day, they were probably passable, at best.  But on that day, they were delicious and meant everything.

I don’t remember much of the rest of that day.  There was no driving.  There was no public transportation.  The heavyweight champ had been rocked by the sickest of sucker punches.

I remember a vivid, terrible nightmare the next night.  I was on a plane and there were people on the plane and the people were screaming and we plunged into a skyscraper and we were on fire.  I woke up shaking and crying.

I remember driving into Manhattan the next day to meet up with Tom and donate blood at the Red Cross.  It felt so good to be free to move again, yet these were some of the strangest miles I have ever driven.  It felt as though we were driving through a hazy dream or a crime scene or a burial ground or through a story that would be told someday.

When we got there, there was an impressive line of people.  It seemed much of New York was there.  It felt good to see people, to be together, and to be doing something.  I’m sure we felt a similar sickness when so many of us were turned away after being told the saddest of facts: there was no real need for blood.

I remember going to Matt’s house in Queens.  I remember the smell in the air when the wind would change directions.  It is an odor I would not wish for anybody to experience, one I neither recognized at the time nor have experienced since.  It was heavy with so much.

Kristina’s  father, a Montana country attorney, pulled out of a conference in North Carolina, rented a car, and headed north to drive his daughter 2045 miles back home.  These were extreme days.

I remember driving up to Vermont to be with dear friends that first weekend.  I remember the paths of pavement leading me out of The Bronx and past the George Washington Bridge.  I remember narrowing highways as I traveled northward.  I remember sunlight and the fluttering leaves in the trees.

I remember putting on some music.  It was the first music I had listened to since that terrible Tuesday.  It was Peter Kater & Nawang Khechog’s album, “The Dance of the Innocents” and I listened to it in its entirety.  I felt them all around me.  So much was in the air.  I cannot remember weeping so deeply in my life.

I slept through 9/11 and I will never forget it.

 

Word Count: 1000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9/11 Wailing Wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUBMISSION TITLE
Missing

IMAGE LOCATION
New York City | New York | United States

CONTRIBUTOR
mtdaveo

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