12 years ago, on a beautiful morning, at probably around the same time, I turned my TV in my NYC apartment to start my morning, have some coffee and watch the Today Show. By then I was no longer working for ML (one of the casualties of the massive reductions that took place on Wall Street with the Internet bubble!). I remember looking out my window and seeing there was not one cloud in the sky and that it was one of those amazing early fall days in NY, when everything feels alive, fresh, electric! Then, Matt Lauer came on and said that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers and we started getting feed from a helicopter. Speculation about pilot error started, that they had crashed into the tour by mistake, etc. I called my cousin Paola, who was at home in NJ and said, this looks fishy, no way could he not see the towers. This is crazy. As we where watching and chatting, I saw the second plane hit and I yelled. I knew that very second that things where very wrong. I knew right then and there that this was the end and the beginning of a new world and way to live. I hanged up and started dialing my husband, who was at work. I tried calling home to my family in Venezuela, my aunt in Fl, anyone and everyone that might be worried about us in NYC. It was so hard to get a connection. Phone lines collapsed and it was almost impossible to talk to anyone. I remember going to our roof top and seeing with my own eyes the smoke and the towers burning. Our doorman Mike was there and we hugged. I went back downstair to 24C and became glued to the TV. I kept thinking "how are they going to put this fire out?" Not in my wildest dreams I could come up with what was about to happen. I watched the towers come down. I thought "this is madness, how can this be happening?". I was glued to the TV for days. I remember the smells, I saw people walking the streets filled with the dust from the towers and thinking the horror they might have witnessed. I waited for Dan to come home and to hug him. I could not sleep much, I was shattered. That day, I became a New Yorker for ever. I cried a lot ( I still cry when I think of that day) but I saw something amazing with my own two eyes. I saw a city that came together like nothing I've ever witnessed. I saw a world that became one. I remember that there where no cars driving around for a few days ( at least that is what it seemed like, it was so eerie) only emergency vehicles and fire trucks. I remember stopping and clapping every time a fire engine went by. I wanted to hug them all. Policemen, firemen, doctors, emergency personnel. All of them. I remember soooo many people walking the streets. I remember lighting candles and all the little memorials people did in street corners. We would stop and pray together. I remember seeing the faces and posting of family members who had someone missing. I remember Grand Central turned into a place where you would walk and see all those postings, and they stayed up for months to come. Slowly but surely NYC came back to the regular NYC we all love. But on a day like today, my heart weeps for everyone that lost a family member, for all of us losing our "innocence", for NYC losing that sense that nothing could break it, for the fear I feel every time I see a low flying plane, for my two beautiful daughters who like everyone else after September 11, 2001 live in this different world. I hope that events like this don't happen again. I hope that senseless acts of destruction in the name of religion or any fanaticism cease to happen. I hope that we remember what we all felt on those days after Sept 11, when we became this huge family, when we were united in our pain but also in our love, our pride and resilience. Never forget!
theartofmadeline
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