It's September So There's Always This...

I’m in a funk.

There are several potential reasons for my mood. I just started a new diet/lifestyle challenge that prohibits eating my favorite things: pasta, pastries and potatoes.

Also, it’s almost Sept. 11.

Every year, I start thinking about Sept. 11, 2001, about a month before the anniversary. I go over the day in my head. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm. I voted for mayor at the local elementary school on my way to work (a vote that would later have to be recast). I walked the two miles through Central Park to my office in midtown. I was excited because my dad was flying into New York for a visit later that day.

I worked in a newsroom then. When the first plane hit, we were on alert, curious, watching it live. We thought it was a small plane, an accident, tragic, but probably not many casualties.

The first thing I always think of though, around Sept. 11, is the sound that my coworkers, Jim and Paul, made when the second plane hit, the “whoa!” that echoed from their corner of the newsroom. That was the sound of the world changing. It was immediately followed by ear-splitting beeps from all our computers that indicated breaking news, then shouts from the editors, talking, typing, calling, ringing. All that noise is what I remember about the moment we realized this was no accident.

A photo I took at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center in 2000. 

My memory is also flooded with people, all the people I worked with on that day and in the days following, the endless hours in the office, the relentlessness of it, the seriousness of the job, the just being together as history happened. Every year, I think of Michael, Marie-France, Kathleen, Robin, Catherine, Jim, Paul, Refet, Steve, Jen, Marcel and the whole group. These people, most of whom I haven’t seen in years, are in my mind like it was yesterday—and they always will be every Sept. 11.

I also think of the first people I called, my friends who were still asleep or getting ready for work because it was only 9:03 a.m. I called Rick and Jenn and Farrin to tell them to turn on their TVs, to stay home, to be safe.

Of course, I called my mom. While I was on the phone with her, I lost my breath for a moment as I remembered my father was supposed to be getting on a plane in San Francisco and coming to see me. “Oh my god, Dad,” I said and hung up.

Frantic when I reached him, I told my dad that under no circumstances should he get on the plane. “Leave now,” I said. “Leave the airport. Go home.” My dad didn’t understand. “Oh, I have to get my bags. I’ll see how it goes,” he said. “No,” I shouted into the phone, starting to cry. “Go home. You are not getting on a plane today.”

Of course, my dad could not have gotten on a plane even if he’d wanted to—all flights were grounded for days.

Eventually, sometime in October, my dad came to New York. He visited Ground Zero with me, but mostly he was there to take me away from N.Y.C. for a few days. I admit, I had become kind of obsessed, riding my bike as close to Ground Zero as I could every evening, staying up late reading The New Yorker, then going to work and writing about it. I was white-knuckling it every day.

Dad and I went to a beautiful B&B in the Berkshires to see the fall colors and put some distance between Ground Zero and me. There was a couple staying at the B&B who had both been in the Twin Towers when the planes hit. We looked at each over brunch, seeing the haunted look in all of our eyes, and silently agreed not to discuss it anymore.

But just because I don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean I will ever forget it. I won’t. I will never forget.