Notes On A Decade

Next Sunday will mark the 10^th anniversary of September 11^th. There is a ton of stuff on television, and lots of stuff written about what it meant to America, questions about whether or not we are any safer, and weepy-waily op/ed pieces on heroics ad nauseum.

September 11^th was not an abstract event for me and my family. On my dad’s side, the Cantor in Cantor-Fitzgerald was family and even though BG was already gone, other family members still had business in that building. On my mother’s side, Arthur was at Fred Alger, and Kenny, his son was, oddly enough at Cantor Fitzgerald. I would later learn a friend from my college days was on American Airlines flight 11. Another friend who worked in the Pentagon happened not to be at work that day because he was moving into a new house and that kept him out of harm's way. And my childhood best friend, who would've been arriving in the WTC Path station at that time, was delayed at home because her daughter barfed on her on the way to school. 

Rodin: the hand that survived
Michael Falco for The New York Times

I was here in Minnesota watching it all from a surreal distance. For days and days, when I wasn’t at my job as a corporate travel agent trying to secure hotel rooms and rental cars because planes weren’t flying and people wanted to get home to their families, I watched the planes hit the towers over and over and over. I was haunted by the knowledge that Kenny called his wife to say he was on his way down the stairs and would stop to find his dad. Neither ever emerged from the rubble.

The videos and constant rehashing went on and on and on. I hated them all. I hated people who talked about it even though they knew nothing. I hated the people who spouted off about how they once saw the twin towers so they understood New Yorkers' feeling when clearly they had no clue. Our home town had been attacked, our friends and relatives and neighbors had disappeared in a cloud of flame and ash. We could barely understand our feelings.  


And then for reasons which still manage to escape me, President Bush started a war in Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with this. Then he started a war against Afghanistan. Even the screenwriters of THE PRINCESS BRIDE knew enough to say, “Never start a land war in Asia.” The one objective, to find Osama bin Laden, went unmet for a decade. 

Every year on 9/11 I cringe as the baloney starts up all over again. The uproar over a Muslim community center and mosque several blocks away from the pit that was once the WTC was disgusting. Would anyone have said such a thing to a church or synagogue group? The TSA is an alien entity unto itself, humiliating old ladies and terrifying children yet they are unable to find the “weapons” hidden and sent through the detection process to test their abilities. We spent the blood of tens of thousands of young men and women in pointless, expensive wars...for what purpose? Are we really any safer?

We have honored the memory of those who perished in the towers, on the planes, in Pentagon, and two absurd wars with a completely hamstrung, dysfunctional government more interested obstructionism than in America. I know I am not the only one repulsed by the grotesque parade of political hatespeech that permeates the airwaves and the halls of Congress in equal amounts.

 There are thousands of us who have lost loved ones in the aftermath.  Not everyone wants to talk about it, or relive it publicly, or even watch the tributes on TV. Why would we? Ten years later, they can't even get their act together to build a new building. Those television specials are depressing in the worst way because they point out we have accomplished nothing in the years since the attacks. 


I prefer to remember the last time I saw Arthur ...sitting across from me in the dining room of my parents' house on Long Island. Alive.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Unless you are a terrorism survivor yourself,

do not attempt to tell a New Yorker who sat for days on end clutching a cell phone, 

terrified every time it rang that there would be more bad news, 

that you understand what he/she felt. 

You don't.