My City: 6 Years Later

Heading home in a cab tonight I saw the twin lights just as I passed Canal Street. I don’t know why I didn’t think they’d be there - at times it seems as if we’ve forgotten. Or maybe we haven’t we’ve just moved on with life still carrying the pain of that day. It still effects us. Down West Broadway, people walking around on a warm, balmy night. Gazing up toward the sky, tilted heads, reflecting. As I looked out the window at the many faces, I wondered...where they here that day? Did they loose someone they knew? My lip quivers, I pause and I find my hand across my heart. It still hurts. It’s still so unfathomable. I think back to that day....working in Barbados...being told a prop plane hit the Towers, but it was ok. I briefly got a phone connection to the states and reached my sister-in-law. She had been crying and I couldn’t understand why? Who could possibility understand? How do you tell someone that 3,000 of their fellow citizens had perished in minutes? It wasn’t until many, many hours later when I actually realized the true enormity of the day. I found myself in a completely surreal situation, sitting in a tourist tavern, calypso music on the drums. Sitting there with two English gentleman, my English angels, who made the bar-maid turn on CNN. All for me. The only American in the bar. A pack of More menthols were slid in front of me. I don’t smoke I said. “You do now” I was told. A wave of nausea overwhelmed me with the first sight of the images. I do recall a loud wail expelling from my body and then shaking, heaving, sobbing and finding my breath very difficult. I went to turn, went to go...go where? I eventually left and went to the business center at the hotel to check email. I believe it was my friend Doug who sent out the email with “Roll Call” in the reference. Tons of reply all’s. Immediate circle accounted for. But 6 years later it is something I recall the events everyday. It shapes our lives. A country in upheaval. My cousin sits in Iraq, and we wait for her to be sent home. Fourteen months later she is still in the Green Zone performing her duties. A timeline, our lives are measured in Pre and Post.