Apple Story

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
March 15, 2002

Last fall I bought an apple. I planned to eat it on a trip. Normally I would not remember such a thing. But normally I don’t plan on taking a 26 hour train trip home when I travel. Normally, I don’t expect to see the immediate aftermath of a plane crash while preparing to start a meeting, as I did when I looked out the office window 48 hours before I bought that apple. I don’t expect any of what happened between that first look out at the skyline and the purchasing of the apple.

And like everything that happened during those two days, how I acquired this apple is recorded in absolute clarity in my mind. The angle of the sun, the shadows of buildings stretching across Broadway, the eerily large spaces between cars and cabs and trucks as they drifted in slow motion down the street, the stunned and grief-stricken zombie people on the sidewalk, the fruit vendor’s eyes about to spill over with tears.

I would be leaving this place that afternoon. Away from the horror, the smell, the same blue sky, the ghosts, the skyscrapers, and the ruins of the tallest of them. And what I would be taking with me is this apple. In case I got hungry on the train.

I’m not sure why I thought I would be hungry. I hadn’t really eaten in days. But perhaps I thought that by leaving here, I would be returning to the normal world where all of this would be unimaginable, unthinkable, unbelieveable, and didn’t really happen. Where food would taste good and enjoying it would not be disrespectful of the dead.

On that same morning, in that same place, a pair of co-workers would also buy apples for the trip home. We’d all been headed for the same meeting, that morning two days earlier. Nearly half a year later, I would be in another city on another continent, together again with the same people. And my co-worker would tell me the story of their apples that never did get eaten on the trip home. She talked about how they each kept those apples, day by day resolving to eat them or throw them away but never could do either. Eventually, though the apples did not last, it became so significant that each bought the other apple-themed gifts for the holidays without realizing it until they exchanged the presents.

She was astonished that I still had my own apple from my trip, slowly softening after all this time. We tried to decipher what it could mean that we each kept these apples. Was it simply a symbol of the city or something deeper? A souvenier or a reminder of sweet and juicy life that was incompatible with the dust, devastation and death all around us? Had we against our will gained a terrible knowledge of good and evil and, recognizing our vulnerability decided to flee, taking our apples with us? Were they fairy tale poison apples or charms to ward off doctors? Or was it just too hard to destroy a tangible reminder from those days for fear of breaking our promises to never forget?

My apple can not last. It is already past being edible. I know this but it’s hard to face that one day it will be gone. Perhaps it will be an anniversary day, a Tuesday, or a cloudless morning after a day of storms. Maybe it will be the day that the last bit of steel and concrete is removed. Or I wonder if one morning I will wake up and know this is the day to throw away the apple for no reason other than to return it to compost so that next year’s tomatoes will grow that much stronger.

When I finally say goodbye to my apple, I will remove the seeds. I have told my colleagues that someday when the hole is filled, and the memorial is built and the barricades and fences are removed from the streets, I will push the seeds into the ground at the place where so much changed so quickly. Because maybe the story was never about the apples but the promise and hope that lay inside of them. And that is what, in a tiny way, I will be bringing back.

-- March 15, 2002

A year ago, I fled from this place with this apple, running from fear, horror, and grief. Feeling like I’d been forced to face and comprehend something I could never even imagined. I now return willingly to this spot. As I did a year ago, I come with fear and horror and grief, carrying this apple. But even as this apple hasn’t been destroyed over the past year, neither has this place. The buildings are gone but the people who died here still endure, made tangible by the love of the people who knew them and the people who came to know them.

To all the people of the Site, I am profoundly and deeply grateful for and honored by the love I have felt from you each day this past year. I give back to you this apple. Like the apple itself, protecting its seeds, please know that I understand how you have protected me and kept your seeds of goodness safe in me. I will carry these seeds with me always, as I carry your love. And in this way, you will never be forgotten. All my love always to you and those you treasure, and rest in peace forever. Amen.

-- August 11, 2002