Somber Sunday and Crazy Memories

With Trish’s friend, Jamie, in town for the weekend, we decided to finally make our pilgrimage downtown to visit the new 9/11 Memorial.  For safety reasons, you need to reserve advanced timed-entrance tickets.  So we wrangled another fellow Richmond-ite, Trish’s friend, Billy, and made it an even foursome. 

Emerging downtown from the subway was a strange sort of déjà vu for me.  I worked at the now defunct New York Society for the Deaf years ago, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center.  I had just returned from a summer theatre gig and hadn’t yet re-started work when the twin towers fell.  I was staying Chris and Dan’s couch in Astoria (now my apartment) and we awoke to a strange phone call from our friend, Damienne, saying a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. 

We actually watched the first tower collapse from the roof of our apartment building.  It was all so unbelievable.  It just didn’t seem possible something of this magnitude, of this scale, could actually be happening in America - in New York City - in our backyard.

Bleary-eyed from staring at the TV and the hours of non-stop coverage on every channel, we finally decided to just stop watching and get out of the apartment.  We walked down the block and sat outside at a nearby diner.  We couldn’t go far because the subways were shut down.  The phone lines were jammed, so we couldn’t contact family and friends to let them know we were OK.  What other option was there but to just sit and stress eat?

Dan, not particularly known for his stress-coping skills, ran off to the gym, of all places.  We wouldn’t see him until much later in the day because of the transit stoppage.

Halfway through our meal, we started seeing them.   Ash-covered men and women in business suits, staring down at their feet, dazed and silent, shuffling passed us.  With the trains out of commission, it had taken all morning for these people to walk sixty blocks from downtown, then across the

59^th Street

Bridge and finally home to Astoria.  No one spoke. 

Fast forward ten years and downtown is now an obligatory stop for every tourist.  In perhaps the ultimate form of rubber-necking, curious folk from around the world surround the chain link fence, snapping photos of the demolished site and the emerging 1 World Trade Center.  It’s a strange and sad inevitability that the site is now a tourist must-see.

On our way to the memorial, we pass Zuccotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street protestors.  A foul combination of B.O. and human waste wafts through the air and we quickly cross the street to avoid further exposure.  Typhoid, anyone?  In theory, I support the 99%, having lived the “starving-artist” lifestyle for some 15 uninsured and intermittently-employed years.  But sadly, the 1% now pays my rent and contributes to my 401(k).  Morgan Stanley is my daddy now and I’m his bitch.

We wait on a long, winding line on

Albany Street

.  Confused tourists surround the entrance gate, surprised to find out that tickets are required.  We’re herded through a security checkpoint and metal detector much like those found at the airport, except we get to keep our shoes on.  Finally, we make our way down a gated path lined with surveillance cameras and into the memorial proper.  Along the way, we are required to show our passes at least half a dozen times.  Security is expectedly extreme.

There’s a phone app (and computer kiosks throughout the memorial) to find specific names.  We look up our only acquaintance, the brother of a family friend.  The app is surprisingly thorough, with a detailed bio of each person.  I scroll down to see that a picture is also included, and sap that I am, immediately start tearing up.  Trish, of course, knows where this might lead and grabs the phone out of my hand before I go into full on weep mode. 

The museum is still under construction, so we wander around the site, leisurely taking it all in.  I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves.