| On September 11, 2001. I woke up. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and watched an episode of The Jeffersons on Nick at Nite while checking my email before I left for work on Wall Street. Just another day. I was working in the press department at Goldman Sachs on Broad Street, just a couple blocks from The World Trade Center. While eating a bagel and running up their long distance talking to my mom in Cleveland, it happened, the first plane hit. I told my mother there was a terrible accident. When the second plane hit, I said, "Mom, I don't think this was an accident, I think it's terrorists. I'll call you back on my cell." I turned to the guy I was working with and said I was going home, he told me that we didn't know if we were supposed to leave yet. I politely said "I'm a temp, I don't give a fuck, I'll get a new job tomorrow." With that, we both left. He tried to get me to cross the Brooklyn Bridge with him, but I was not going over any bridges with out of control planes in the air. As I walked out the front doors of 85 Broad Street, the sky was black, and it was raining papers, debris and reports that someone was just working on before their life was ended. I took my cell out to call my mom back and let her know that I had to walk to the village and try to figure out how to get home. My cell was dead and the pay phones weren't working. Not familiar with the area, the only way I knew to get to the village was to walk towards the Trade Center, never imagining that they were going to collapse. As I walked, I saw the first tears, a middle aged African American woman, just standing on the corner crying. He mother was in the subway and she didn't know if she was okay or not. Panic stopped at that moment. I stood there, hugging this woman for about five minutes, reassuring her that her mother was okay. What is ironic, is that my mother was at home, watching the news, imaging that I was dead. I stood at my tenth pay phone trying to get a hold of my mother while I listened to one woman who came out of Tower 2 trying to get a hold of her sister in Tower 1. I watched a police woman pull a man into a Deli to comfort him and calm him down. The next thing I heard was a succession of loud bangs - sounding like machine guns or bombs. People went running in every directions thinking that we were being attacked, not realizing that right in front of us the first Tower was falling. I was quickly ushered into a little Art Gallery's basement. Once in the basement, I began to visualize every war story I had heard. I pictured being trapped for days, then being found by the terrorists and all of us being tortured. I decided at that moment that I was going to die. And I decided that I was going to control my death as best I could. I got up off of the floor in the basement and proceeded to walk upstairs with the people in their fetal positions staring at me with this dumbfounded look on their face. I decided that if I was going to die, I was going to do it in the sunlight, not in some basement. And before I died, I was going to call my mother and tell her that I loved her. As I came out of the Gallery, the second Tower collapsed and came charging down the street. I ran in the crowd with the thousands of other people running from the smoke of debris and rubble. I would turn and see people no more than 20 feet behind me falling into the attack. Two hours later I was able to call my mother from a dry cleaners in the village. Neither of us could speak, at least, if she was speaking, she was crying so hard I could not understand what she was saying. The only thing that I could understand was when she said "I love You." Now, every time I talk to her, I say I Love You. On September 12, 2001, I woke up. 2,000 other New Yorkers did not. |
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| When you're standing on the edge of nowhere, There's only one way up, So your heart's gotta go there. Through the darkest night, see the light shine bright. When heros fall, in love or in war, They Live Forever |