Dear Dad,
Today, September 11, 2014, I got
up, dressed and went to the gym. My plan was to do 30 minutes on the
stairmaster and take a yoga class. I took the stairmaster I liked which had a view, without turning my
neck too far, of three television screens. One was a music video screen, one
was MSNBC and one was the Today show.
I started the stairmaster on slow
and noticed the MSNBC screen had pictures of the World Trade Center tower after the first hit. It
was a little after nine am, the screen informed me. At first, I watched
thinking, I should watch. This was a horrible event in America’s history. I
watched as the tower burned, pieces or it occurred to me, people, dropping off. I looked, looked away, took a breath and looked again, feeling like I was submerging into some awful dream and then half waking up, taking another breath and submerging again.
I thought about how that day, a neighbor girl asked me if I had seen "a plane crash into a tower on television" as I put my kids on the bus. I walked across the street and into the house, turned on
the tv, saw, probably, this same picture and heard Katie Couric on the Today Show, talking in a voice mixed with half disbelief and half shock.
I watched for an hour, called Lisa in Santa Fe on the way to work, truly wondering if they were bombing
other parts of the country. At work, someone brought a television in to keep an
eye on what was happening.
I kept watching the screen, forcing
my eyes to take in these horrible pictures, thinking about how a day later, I
caught my six year old Nadia, sucking her thumb and staring blankly at the continuous run of
pictures on television and how I had to turn it off. I was worried she would be
traumatized.
I turned away from the screen
focusing on Beyonce doing a music video on one screen and Matt Lauer talking on
the other. This is traumatic, I thought. I don’t need to watch this. So, I
watched Matt, turned up the stairmaster and started moving faster on the
stairs.
But then, I felt guilty. How awful
am I, that I can’t make myself watch a few minutes of something that changed
America? That killed thousands of people and left thousands of people grieving,
still grieving. What kind of a wimp am
I?
So, I focused on it again and turned the stairmaster up two
more levels, realizing, I wanted to outrun these pictures, literally step away from them
and then, thinking about the stories of the people on the stairs, trying to get
out, the firemen who lost their lives on the stairs and right then, a ball of
flame popped out the side as the second tower was hit.
And whether or not it was related,
the lady on the other side of me abruptly got off the stairmaster and went down
the row to another machine. And I seriously thought, I should get off, I should
stop this. I focused on Gloria Estefan music video, I switched to pictures of
the Today show discussing a new type of taxi cab. And then, guilty again I glanced back, because I decided I
would keep watching but not exclusively and I saw a picture of the 9/11 memorial.
I remembered being there twice,
once before it was open and just the horrible hole, visiting this now famous, small church
close by that continued to stand after the
towers fell. Along the church walls were memorials to firemen and people involved. I remembered seeing a Teddy Bear, a Firemen's hat, a cot where people rested..And again, when it was open. How I stood pressing my fingers down
on the black stone names etched in the wall, thinking, there is no way to even understand
all this pain. I am so sorry. And closing my eyes and letting the sound of the
water somehow make me feel better.
My time on the stairmaster was up.
I slowed down, thinking this is my reality now. Life does go on with Beyonce and
for the Today Show. But, I realized, my reality is also that I lived through one of the
worst events in America’s history. It changed our country. And I remembered how
proud I was of all of us Americans for getting back up, for the rebuilding, for
the dealing with it imperfectly and perfectly and for increased patriotism I
saw and felt then and felt again at this moment. And I thought, it was the
right thing to do, to remember. To watch what changed us, even when it's painful because I think it always will be and should be, to some degree. And then, to let it go. Not forgetting, right? But going on, knowing since that day, I feel more like I feel when I say the Pledge of Allegiance...like I'm part of an, us, a country, not just an I, who lives in America.
Love
Margot
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