Thank you
Meredith Morgan, Freelance Artist & Designer
Normal then Trapped, Painful Places, Moving from Grief Toward Hope
Trying to Feel Normal
Ken from Carnegie Mellon and I continued to talk after Jennifer had gone on to meet other people. We both wanted some way to feel a tiny bit of normalcy. There was a movie theater just a couple of blocks away and we decided that would offer an escape from our new reality. We saw Nicole Kidman in “The Others” and while it was a supernatural, psychological thriller it was great and really just what I had hoped to find. It really took us away from the world outside of the theater. We felt relieved and a bit renewed. It was later in the evening and since we both lived well beyond 120th Street, we thought another good remedy would be to walk, to walk all the way there. It was a fine plan.
New Immediate Danger: Trapped
In our newfound sense of relative ease we began strolling up Fifth Avenue, the familiar lights atop the Empire State Building at Fifth and Thirty-Fourth Streets, were a firm beacon to move toward. We walked and talked until Twenty-Third Street when a female police officer was pushing at the air, palms out, in our direction. She motioned for us and everyone to head in the opposite direction. We really didn’t get it at first. What was she trying to tell us? But we did get that other people were turning around, heading back. What was going on? Nervous energy began to fill me. We heard that a bomb-sniffing dog had detected a bomb in the Empire State Building. My mind was filled with visions of the beautiful building, once more the tallest building in Manhattan, exploding! Would stone and glass and steel shoot 11 blocks? I didn’t think so, but it might. Was it actually about it happen?
Our hearts pounding, we turned around and started back to Union Square. Now there was not much of an area in which we thought we might be safe. We couldn’t go above 23rd Street or below 14th Street. We couldn’t get away from what could be coming next.
That day I had carried with me a respirator mask I had used in college for scenic painting to keep chemicals out of my lungs. I felt for it in my bag but was scared to put it on. I worried that people would think I was part of a bomb plot, prepared for it as I was. Ridiculous, I know, to worry about that, especially when wartime gas masks had sold out all over the city. Still, I didn’t know what looked too crazy or suspicious. And I didn’t have one for Ken. I just kept the mask handy in my bag. I did get out my cell phone. This might be my good-bye call to my family. I didn’t want to scare them, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to let them know what was happening, and to tell them I loved them. It could be bad. It felt quite possibly that it would be very bad.
At about 20th Street I called my mother’s phone but only reached the answering machine. “Mom, I’m near Union Square and there might be a bomb in the Empire State Building. I’m heading away from it but we can’t go very far because the streets are blocked off. I love you. I’ll call you later.” I had to make sure someone knew what was happening in case they didn’t hear from me again, or least for a while. I called my friend Keith. Again, I only reached an answering machine. I left a similar message for him and and asked him to call my family. Again I worried that people might think I was being too dramatic. But the unspeakable had already happened two days ago. I would risk embarassment for the chance to say "I love you" to my family.
We hastily continued until 14th Street. Now what? We were scared and we wanted to get home but we couldn’t. There was a boutique hotel on the southeast side of Union Square and I thought we should ask if we could stay there until it was safe. He didn’t think they’d let us. “It’s an emergency” I said. “I think they have to let us, at least stay in the lobby.”
We walked a block or two west and saw a small fire vehicle with equipment compartments on the back. Two dazed fire firefighters sat in the truck staring in the direction we had just come from. They seemed to be as frightened as we were. They were hearing the reports on their radio of what was happening.
“Should we take the subway to get out of here?” we asked them. Haltingly one of the responded “I wouldn’t”. That was not reassuring, but could anyone reassure anyone else of anything during this time? We were scared; our minds full of gas attacks, bombs - more war, essentially. The fire fighters just told us to get home.
I suggested to Ken that we start walking west toward the Hudson River. If we get as far west as we can maybe we can find a safe route north, and out of danger. It seemed to be our only option. We began walking, and miraculously a cab was heading north on 8th Avenue. The cab driver stopped for our waving. We asked him to take us north toward 151st St. We might be on our way to safety. A bomb threat was we got for trying to venture out and feel okay in some way?
The cab neared Ken’s stop at 120th Street. He gave the driver enough money to get me home, kissed my cheek and said “Get home safe”. That’s just what I did and stayed there. 9/11 was not over. It wouldn’t really be over for a very long time in New York.
Days and Weeks After: Painful Places to Be
It took many days for there to be any real sense of relative safety, at least for me. Riding the subway was not what it had been. I did eventually ride it, worrying that a bomb or gas release could easily happen. The tiniest occurrence or suspicion in the subway system caused that subway line, and sometimes many subway lines to stop. The train might not operate the remainder of the day while the incident was thoroughly investigated and cleared. I had a doctor appointment in Brooklyn, and knew it was possible, that once there, there could be any kind of interruption in service, long or short and I may not be able to come back to home in Manhattan. I did make it to Brooklyn and back, more than once. There were delays many days.
I had no desire to go to what was now called “Ground Zero”, a name I hated. It sounded so marketed and packaged. I didn’t want to see what was no longer there. I didn’t want to see those pieces of the building jumbled together, shrouded in smoke. That was a familiar image to everyone now, but it was just too much. The place I had worked, the buildings themselves that I had gotten to know, that place in the sky where I could walk around and sit and work and want to live, was now gone. No one could ever be in that same place in the sky again. A place where I was, and so many others were, would no longer be a place to go. I didn’t want to see it.
There were of course times in the weeks after that I did go to the WTC area. I was finally willing to venture to J&R Computer, a favorite place to geek-out. It’s on Park Row, on the south side of City Hall Plaza, blocks away from the site. I had loved going there. I was disappointed that J&R was still closed since the attacks. And now I found myself with no distraction, standing too close to the area where I could see where the buildings once stood, and the bits that remained.
I remember entering the City Hall subway station to leave, feeling dazed and nearly lost. I stood on the platform, my mind shutting down. I was just staring. A man asked which direction I was going. “I don’t know” was my reply.
I did catch a train uptown and to home. There would be more moments of sudden solemnity, unexpected confusion and sadness, and constant concern as I saw the National Guard troops and dogs each day in Grand Central Terminal.
Weeks later, shortly after the Ground Zero area was deemed stable again and trains could pass by, I took a subway to Brooklyn. The train would pass directly beneath the site. The train had to slow to a crawl because the area was still vulnerable to physical vibrations. It seemed like the only appropriate way to travel through that area now, slowly and with reverence. The subway car fell silent of any chatter there may have been. We were passing through the very area were people had been separated into bodies, and souls. The tile station sign still read “World Trade Center”.
Involuntarily my mind imagined the area and the station and even the subway car inhabited with those souls. I truly wondered if those that had died were still there. I knew most of them were still physically there, as disturbing as that was to know. But I imagined them, standing on the subway platform, riding the train with us. The enormity of it: a normal, beautiful day, getting off the train at that station, heading way up in the elevators, getting started, taking calls, joking with your co-worker as you bought coffee from one of the little snack carts on certain floors, never knowing it was the last time you’d do these things, was pressing down on us. We riders of that slow train were silent, full of our thoughts and grief and dismay.
The train did move on, and once clear of the area it did speed up, and we were able to make one incremental step toward passing through our collective pain and fear and know that we were still on our way to our destination that day. It took each train ride, each venture out of our apartments, meeting one another, seeing our own families again, getting used to the National Guard everywhere and new projects and work and friends, each new day, for us to find whatever new place in the sky we might occupy.
