My Sober 9/11

I know it is currently 2/28, but I wanted to share this as one of my first posts.  I wrote this on 9/11/2013 and shared it on Facebook.  This note is one of the things that lead several people to encourage me to start a blog.  So now it will indeed live on in the blogosphere, rather than simply on Facebook.  Here is that post, unedited, as it appeared last year:

Today has been my first sober 9/11 in twelve years.  Don't get me wrong: That is not to say that I've been drunk for the past twelve 9/11's, but today is the first one I have spent wholly unassisted by a glass of wine, a strong cocktail, or some sort of (legally prescribed to me, as the lawyer in me must tell you) prescription medication.  Those who know me well, or who have observed my demeanor (or Facebook statuses) on this day over the years, know that I have never said much in a public forum about this day or my experiences on it twelve years ago.  I have told the story privately many times, but not on a public forum.  And I'm not going to tell it all here today.  But I have had one overwhelming thought today, and that one I felt the need to share.


9/11, for me - as I imagine for most other people - is a complicated memory.  It is a series of snapshot images seared forever into my memory such that when people hash tag #NeverForget, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment but always wonder how it is even possible and what it would be like to just for one day be able to forget.  It is a million mixed emotions that are too much for this particular forum.  Some days, they are too much simply to feel.  It is a day on which incredible bonds were formed - bonds with friends and classmates, bonds with a City, and bonds with a Nation - that will never, never be broken.  I remember it all very well. 

And I also remember having the distinct thought on 9/12 that there were children being born that very day who never experienced 9/11.  Would never experience 9/11.  Would never have to have those memories.  Just one day after the horrific loss of life that I watched with my fellow New Yorkers, new life entered the world that never knew that day.  It was, for me, a powerful thought that recurred to me a lot over those next few days.

This year, in a couple of months, my child is due to be born.  And for her, 9/11 will be something that happened in the history books.  It will be something that she will ask her father and me about the way that we asked our parents about the Kennedy assassination or our grandparents about Pearl Harbor.  Where were we?  What was it like?  How do we remember it?  An event that changed my world so drastically will, for my daughter, be an historical event; one she will read about but never live, never have to recall.  And it is among my greatest prayers for her that she never does live a day like that one.

But when she asks me about it, I hope that I will find the strength to tell her the story.  She will have seen pictures, of course.  She will have read about it, no doubt.  And I hope I will be able to share with her (most of) the pictures I still see in my memory.  I will spare her the worst details, as I will spare them here; there were sights and sounds and smells that I will never forget and that she is blessed to need not know.  But I hope that when she asks where I was, I can tell her about my day in lower Manhattan. 

And in addition to the historical facts and the journalistic who, what, when and where, I hope that I tell her about the guy on Washington Square who stood there all day giving out free hugs.  I hope I tell her how when someone managed to get a call through on the pay phone, the lucky caller took names and numbers from people standing farther back in line to give to whoever we had managed to reach so that someone somewhere else in the country (with a better chance of getting a call through) could call all of those people to let them know their loved ones in New York were OK.  Her grandmother called perfect strangers who were the parents of those behind me in that line.  I hope I tell her how so many people donated blood, they had to turn donors away.  I hope I tell her how we all searched for something - anything - we could do to help. 

After another recent tragedy in our Nation, this Fred Rogers quote was widely circulated in the media and social media: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."  I hope I tell my daughter that in my New York City world on 9/11, you did not have to look far.  The helpers were everywhere. 

I hope I tell her how, when there was nothing we could do to help but stay out of the way and heed the advice of local and federal officials, we did that.  Together.  Friends who had only known each other a few weeks (because you see, we were college freshman - 17 or 18 years old and mere weeks out of our parents' homes) became friends who would last a lifetime in those hours and days.  My daughter will meet those people in my life, because those people are like family now. 

I hope that I take her to New York to show her my most beloved City.  I hope I take her there often.  I hope I tell her how when people back home asked if I was planning to transfer colleges and leave New York in the wake of 9/11, I must have looked at them as though they had two heads.  Leave New York?  But I was already a New Yorker.  I will always be a New Yorker.

And at the end of it all, I hope I share with her the quote that I share as my Facebook status every 9/11.  One year later, on 9/11/02, the President of NYU said at a Ceremony of Remembrance: "Never miss an opportunity to love another human being."  I hope my daughter takes that lesson away from the history books.  I hope that she doesn't learn to hate or fear a group of people because of a few individuals who perpetrated horrific acts.  I hope that she does learn that her Nation is resilient.  Determined.  Proud.  Strong.  And that none of us should ever miss an opportunity to love another human being.

And finally, I'm thankful that if, when my daughter asks all these questions, I have a hard time answering them, I married an American hero... who will tell her his own story, and mine.  And who will show her every day what we can, should, and do stand and fight for.