Why Is This Day Not a National Holiday Yet?

What a different world, pre 9.11.01. So many years have gone by and yet it still feels surreal. I can’t watch the coverage on TV, so my TV stays off today. It feels disloyal and heartless to avoid the coverage, but I just can’t. I feel for the people who lost loved ones and am grateful that I am not in that category. But, not to get all metaphysical, I think we all lost a lot that day.

I was living on the boat, which gave us a unique visual perspective and a brief moment of reality check when the FBI asked to commandeer our boat. (And, in a state of shock, I asked them if it was OK that I didn’t have enough life jackets.) My brother’s friend came down to my marina and took our dingy with an outboard and packed as many people on it without sinking and puttered across the Hudson. Cells phones worked intermittently, and so for an extended period of time I, like most people, was suspended in a state of ignorance, unsure of where loved ones were, unsure if my brother and his wife changed trains at the WTC before the towers collapsed, unsure of what was going on elsewhere.

I have hundreds of pictures that I took, but I can’t really look at them anymore and I won’t post them. Instead, I am posting pictures of how I remembered the city before that day. And I remember how the city changed so much in the weeks that followed. People were so polite and kind. The country felt so united together. I miss that.

My life is so different now. Nicole and I have a NYC escape plan, a plan for where we will meet if another disaster hits NYC. WTF? This is modern living? Bin Laden says he wants to develop nuclear power and bomb the USA. And, you know what, I believe him. He has proven to be someone who follows though on threats.

I remember going out for lunch with Nicole in the weeks after this. We were not even close to dating: This was one of our pre-dating friendship days. I was going through one of my No Drinking phases (a brief stoppage of drinking before I quit for good). We went to The Half King and ate comfort food and then went on our separate way; her back up town and me back down. If you told me then that eight years down the road we would be married with two daughters, I never would have believed it. But, then again, I never would have thought that terrorists would take down the towers.