I live in a suburb of New York City, the kind of place where parents spend their weekends taking their kids to soccer games, socializing with their friends, and relaxing with their families. At least half, if not a majority of the fathers (and some mothers) work in New York, commuting their by train and by car. This is the story of five years ago.
I woke up that morning, and after my husband went to work in lower Manhattan, I sent my two oldest children off to school, one in second grade and the other in kindergarten. My youngest, a two year old, was home that day. It's a slow morning and I'm having some trouble getting pulled together. At a little after nine, the phone rings, and my babysitter's daughter is calling. She tells her mother that a plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, and she is upset, because her husband works at 7 WTC, in the Trade Center complex. We turn on the T.V., and we watch as the second plane plows into the second tower. We know immediately that it cannot be an accident, and that the Towers, and maybe more of Manhattan, are under attack.
While friends from other parts of the country call, we watch the television, and try to make sense of what we are watching, smoke pouring from the towers. My mind is still having trouble getting my mind around what is happening, and we hear that a plane has gone down in Pennsylvania. Suddenly, I remember that my friend's husband works in the WTC, and of course, I have been wondering what is happening to my ex-husband, who survived the first bombing years ago. I call my friend, who tells me that she got a call from her husband, who started work in one of the top floors of one of the towers just a few months before. She says that she is trying to keep the line open for her husband, and we hang up.
Suddenly, we are watching the first tower collapse upon itself. I used to work Downtown, and I know lower Manhattan like the back of my hand. I try to imagine what could be happening to the people who are outside the towers, and how far the collapsed tower would have fallen on the city blocks around it. Then, I get a call from a neighbor who tells me not to worry about my husband, who is at the ferry on lower Manhattan, trying to get to his car on the New Jersey side. I continue to watch the television, as the second tower collapses. My babysitter's daughter calls now, crying; she doesn't know where her husband is, so I tell my babysitter to go home. She leaves, and suddenly, I hear jets scrambling directly over my house. For a moment, I think it may be a nuclear attack, because they are so fast, and so loud. I grab my two-year-old, and rush for the basement, thinking about my other two children just two blocks away. I sit under a doorway downstairs, try to calm my child, and pray.
After a few minutes, I decide to go upstairs. As I start up the stairs, I have the distinct feeling that my friend's husband is dead, and that my ex-husband is going to be fine. I continue praying as I get dressed, and get in the car to go to my friend's house. On the radio, they are reporting that there are no ambulances coming to the hospitals, that are all standing by for the injured. By the time I get to my friend's house, there are other people there. They are watching the television, and my friend is calm until her parents arrive. Then she rushes to her father, and she breaks into sobs.
Our children's grammer school has announced that they are letting the children out of school at mid-day. Since my daughter is best friends with my friend's daughter, I tell her that I will pick up the girls. I go home and hear from my neighbor that my husband is on his way home, and is driving a group of men home with him. She tells me that my husband is fine, but that her husband says that he is very quiet. I walk to school to pick up the kids, and I see him on the front lawn of the school, talking to someone and wiping away tears. I tell him that we are picking up my friend's daughter, and she can't see him crying, and hat our friend's husband hasn't come home. He tells me that our friend worked on a high floor, and that he won't be found. I can't believe it, and I tell him you don't know that. He nods, saying that he watched the second tower fall from the ferry, and that there is "nothing left." My friend's daughter comes out, and I grab her and my own kids. I want to get them home before she hears what has happened. When she asks why fathers are there, I tell her that something has happened in New York and that everyone is coming home early. She brightens up, and says "Oh, good, my daddy works in New York, and he'll be coming home early too!"
When we get the children home, I tell my husband to take the kids out to keep them away from the T.V. He proposes a mall, and I remind him that everyone there will be talking. I tell him you have to take them somewhere where no one is talking about this. He drives to a highway, finds a driving range, and pays the man to open it up, so that they can have it all to themselves, away from everyone. That night, her mother comes to pick her up. When I beg her to leave her daughter, that the girls are already talking about a sleep-over, (I want to preserve her childhood for just one more night), she says no, she has to tell her youngest daughter what is happening and takes her home. She is still hoping that her husband will come home, but it is obvious that she is much grimmer than she had been in the afternoon.
I talk to my ex-husband, who tells me that he escaped just 5 minutes before the second tower came down. He walked down 63 flights of steps, with the sprinklers shooting water that mixed with airplane fuel reached half-way up his calves. He said he had someone in his office, when they felt the building jolt and heard the crash, and they both thought they should go under the desk. Then they saw airplane parts fall past the window, and they realized that they should get out as fast as possible. Almost instantly, the electrical closet next to his office was on fire. He tells me that he can't stop thinking about the firemen, who were going up the stairs the entire time that they were going down the stairs. And he tells me "When I got out of the building, I saw a head, I saw a leg, I saw guts." When I tell him that we have a friend who didn't come home, he tells me that from what he saw, no one above the 80th floor escaped. He tells me "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your friend is dead." That night, I go to sleep thinking that just 35 minutes away, in lower Manhattan, there are thousands of people dead under the rubble.
The next morning, I wake up, and as consciousness creeps in, I think "It's a dream, oh please God, please let it be a dream." Then as I awaken, I realize that it is not a dream. I head over to my friend's house, and as I arrive, in the early morning, she is on her front step, alone, crying. I think to myself "This is bad. He didn't come home last night." In the next few days, I have her daughter at my house during the day, to keep her away from the grownups, who are crying at her house. When her daughter asks me, "if my father is still alive, why didn't he come home?" I can only think to tell her "This is probably a good time to pray." Meanwhile, no one knows or hears anything about their missing loved ones. The most you can do is to send your own relatives into New York to post pictures of the missing, and check the hospitals. The worst part is that no one calls you, you just wait.
My friend turned out to be one of the "lucky" ones. Exactly one week after the towers were attacked, almost to the minute, she gets a call from the coroner telling her that they have recovered the remains of her husband. She is fortunate to have a body to bury. She can have a funeral, not a memorial service. Within the next week, there are memorial services everywhere, at every church and synagogue. People who got on their train or into their car on a beautiful, clear September day, and never came home. They are all heroes.
There was a time when people would not try to make a profit from the deaths of our heroes. They would not politicize the tragedy of the orphans, the wives and husbands, and the mothers and fathers of our fallen for their own ends. That was a long time ago.