I Remember

So, a first for this blog:  This post has nothing to do with autism.  It is, of course, September 11th, and I am working in lower Manhattan for the first time in my life.  It's put my brain in a strange place today, and this was the end result.

I remember that we chose to drive into work that day.  It was brilliant and cloudless, an unreal brilliant blue full of longing for childhood days spent out of doors.  I was wearing a skirt with new shoes, honoring the loveliness with my outfit.  We drove through the Battery Tunnel, not knowing that my anal retentive need to be early had delivered us to safety and relatively freed us from chaos. 

I remember my boss asking me if I had heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  I gave him my best “WTF” look.  After all, I had just passed by there in the car, maybe 15 minutes earlier.  Minutes later, we would scramble to get to the proper windows when we heard that another plane had hit the second tower.  I went to the bathroom to doctor the back of my new shoes with padding, because they were blistering my feet, too bewildered to make sense of any of it.  Coming back to my desk, my husband was standing there, pushing me to grab my things and GO.  I told him that I couldn’t just walk out of work.  He told me to look around; the rest of the office had already done the same.  I suddenly remembered that my mother worked on the tip of Manhattan and tried to call her.  Of course, there was nothing but a busy signal.  We left. 

I remember he had the presence of mind to stop at an ATM, not knowing how or if banks would be affected.  We walked back to his office, though it probably wasn’t the brightest place to be, located down the block from the UN.  The collective group stood around the large screen TV, watching as smoke, ashes, and people came through the windows.  Watching as the first and then the second tower collapsed.  My brain would not, could not process what it was seeing.  I called my parents and discovered that my father had not heard from my mother; we didn’t know where she was.  Hours later, I thought to check my answering machine, where I found frantic phone calls from my best friend, her mother, and her mother in law, all trying to find me.  Located in Chicago, she could not remember where in Manhattan I worked. 

I remember finally calling her office, and having the receptionist screech, “Oh my gosh, don’t hang up!  I’m going to get her!”  Apparently, *all* of the hospice she worked at was waiting for me to call.  I called my father again, and finally exhaled when he told me that mom had walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, found a safe place to wait, and he was leaving to go get her.  I walked outside into the empty neighborhood and found the only shop still open and bought myself comfortable clothing and sneakers, no longer able to stand being dressed for an ordinary work day.  More hours later we attempted to drive home, only to be caught on the road as building 7 collapsed.  We were herded into Queens, and were lucky enough to have family to stay with overnight.  We called as many friends as we could, reassuring and being reassured that all were safe.  I closed my eyes that night, but did not sleep.

I remember going outside the next day, and the hideously painful sound of a silent New York City.  We finally made our way home through the streets.  I desperately wanted, bone deep needed, my home, my bed, my normal.

I remember the phone call shattering the fragile peace; a friend informing us that his brother in law was missing.  He wasn’t supposed to be at the World Trade Center that day, but somehow he was.  I remember my husband’s irritation that I wouldn’t give up my desperate need to collapse and sleep and go to them.  I remember that I couldn’t find the words to tell him that after hours upon hours of numb, my brain could NOT function anymore, and was protecting itself the only way it could, by forcing me to shut down.  I remember repeating, “I can’t…I just can’t”, over and over again, and failing to bridge that enormous communication gap.  I remember that because I couldn’t, I was alone when the pain and the tears finally hit.  I remember days later, when we all realized that he would never come home again.

I remember the stories that would take hours, days, years to come out.  A friend who should have been on a different PATH train and would have been under the towers.  Someone’s mother, who made it out.  Someone’s boyfriend, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald.  Ashes that made lower Manhattan a permanent graveyard.

I am working in lower Manhattan today.  I remember.