Anniversary Eve

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
September 10, 2002

On September 10, 2002, I was back in New York. Vacation, I told my co-workers although I did not tell them where and I said it in a way that did not invite further questions. I was going because I needed to, because of last year, but I didn’t know what to expect. And neither did New York itself. In a city known for its spectacular annual countdown to New Year’s Day, this count down to a new year seemed to have caught everyone uncertain how to react. People busied themselves with their regular routines while fresh and colorful flags appeared on buildings next to the faded and tattered ones from last fall. The flags on poles were raised only to half mast. Signs near the entrances to stores indicated they would be closed until mid-morning or noon the next day out of respect, and window displays were temporarily covered by banners, many simply saying Remember. Around the Trade Center Site, notices were posted on street posts indicating No Parking On Wednesday without explaining why. There were plans for events and ceremonies, but no one could anticipate how we would feel as the afternoon ticked into evening. A woman behind a deli counter told me that no one complained all day about the 93 degree heat and humidity. It doesn’t seem right to complain, she said, and that seemed to sum up the day.

The last hours of that day, I spent with others in Washington Square. There were activities to suit every need. Political speeches concerning the plights of people in other countries, a peace pole in which to deposit written prayers, organized musical groups and people just strumming guitars. People handed out buttons and flags, and leaflets about toxic chemicals from the Site, and what to do if you find yourself still traumatized one year later. In one corner, there were lessons on folding origami cranes. In another, dancers in Asian costumes swirled through songs. Buddhist monks drifted through the park carrying paper lanterns lit with candles and leaving tens of them on benches for people to take. Soon the whole park was filled with people carrying the lanterns, decorated with markers with pictures of hearts, and the words “love” and “peace”, and the outlines of the Twin Towers. One of the event organizers reminded people of the proper way to deal with candles; New York now has a grim understanding of this. Don’t drip wax on the park floor, he instructed. Shrines are not allowed. Repeat: no shrines. People ignored him and constructed small memorials of dozens of candles, dripping wax, in front of the peace pole and by a banner saying Imagine constructed of thousands of paper cranes. People signed sheets spread out on the ground, eventually to be sent to other countries. The theme on the one to Afghanistan: we’re sorry. On the one to Iraq: we don’t want to hurt you. A mom and dad chased their toddler around and around the trees. Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrr! They roared and growled at him. We’re gonna gitcha. And he squealed and laughed at the pretend danger, secure in the knowledge that he was utterly safe.

A bit before midnight, I went over to the corner where a sing-along was in progress. This seemed like the last thing I would want to do; it was too much like a happy group around a campfire. But they were singing New York, New York. And suddenly it seemed the best thing of all to do. I couldn’t have been anywhere else in the world at this moment but back in New York among the people with which I had shared so much horror the year before, and whose recovery I watched from afar, checking my own ability to cope against theirs. And if they believed the best way to enter the first minutes of the anniversary of a dreadful day was to hold candles of mourning and sing songs full of optimism, then I would too.

After that, no one was sure what song should be next. The musicians tried New York State of Mind but that didn’t have the exact right mood – the current New York state of mind was too relentlessly sad – although people sang along politely. Then, after some discussion, the guitars and bass started playing a bouncy reggae-like tune and gradually people caught on: I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me down… At first, it was just a song. And then we knew. We knew the awful truth, that tomorrow was inevitable as the next line: it’s gonna be a bright sunshiny day.

We sang further into the song: I can see clearly now the pain is gone. No, no. No. The pain has just started, hasn’t let up one single second for a whole year. It’s nowhere near being gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared. Impossible to imagine what could make them disappear. Impossible to imagine they could disappear. Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for. Is there such a thing? Is there really such a thing? Oh please, someday, let there be such a thing. It’s gonna be a bright sunshiny day. And with that verse, every last bit of protection we’d built up to save us from the onslaught of what we were all feeling – that vast, unending, piercing pain – vanished, and it was last year all over again, without even the cushion of shock and disbelief we had back then.

And we kept singing. There was nothing else we could do. The seconds kept moving us forward; the music kept moving us forward. The tenth was becoming the eleventh. Look up above, there’s nothing but blue sky. Yes it’s still night but morning will come. Last year on the 11th we weren’t sure if the sun would rise on the 12th. It’s the one thing we’ve learned, this terrible year: the sun will come. It has come every morning for a year, and it will come again today as the countdown continues to 8:46 AM and finally to 10:28. And there will be blue sky again. We sang those words – blue sky – through clenched teeth to keep from screaming from the agony and anguish that came from that blue sky almost exactly a year ago. We sang those words – blue sky – with every shred of the hope we had salvaged from the ruins of all the lives that were so irrevocably changed a year ago. And, finally, that’s how the anniversary day began, with a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard before: voices joined together, singing, with the rawest of agony and the deepest yearning for hope. Together.

Look straight ahead there’s nothing but blue sky. A year ago I looked straight out the window while a building burned into a cloud of ash, fell into column of dust, collapsed into nothing but blue sky. This year, marching with the firefighters’ bagpipe procession, I walked forward, looking straight ahead at the nothingness of the hole of blue sky getting closer and closer. As the exact moment of the start of this past year got closer and closer. And when the moment arrived, the hot and humid and sticky air vanished, and the wind whipped up the dust of the dead and laid it with fierce tenderness upon the living. And it was a bright sunshiny day.