Recov­ery

What did we learn from Sep­tem­ber 11?

I learned that noth­ing, whether it is bad or good, lasts for­ev­er.  After the events of the day, that tru­ism seemed to apply only to good things: sky­scrap­ers, hap­py kinder­garten, safe­ty, security.

But as the months went by, I learned that the bad bits do not last for­ev­er, either.  As a love­ly Scot­tish writer put it, “Grief is a won­der­ful thing in a way, because after a bit you can put it down, by the side of the road, and walk on.”  I learned to do that, but it was slow-going and with many steps back­ward along the way.  I learned that in many ways, I was made of The Wrong Stuff.  I could not be far­ther from the per­son­al­i­ty of a hero who runs into a burn­ing build­ing or a may­or who goes to 343 fire­men’s funer­als, or Abby the Kinder­garten Teacher who spent sev­en hours a day with 45 five-year-olds and was still smil­ing at 3 p.m.  I just was not made of The Right Stuff.

I empathized with the edi­to­r­i­al writer of the New York Times who mused whether she would rather die smoth­ered in a tun­nel or falling from a bridge.  I wor­ried a great deal about vehi­cles parked in my street with no imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fi­able own­er.  The whole “if you see some­thing, say some­thing” mot­to of New York City found a will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor in me, and my local precinct of New York’s Bravest got hearti­ly sick of my phone calls.  I’m sure I was on a “loony neigh­bor” list with the box next to my name firm­ly ticked.  In ink.

I took a lot of fit­ful naps and became obses­sive­ly famil­iar with the topog­ra­phy of Afghanistan.  I was irri­ta­ble and snap­pish.  I was not inspi­ra­tional or uplift­ing or even one iota optimistic.

But the thing was, life was relent­less.  Cop­ing with Avery’s needs got me up in the morn­ing and kept me going dur­ing the day.  It was impos­si­ble not to get excit­ed when the class­room chicks hatched, and even though there was­n’t a place to sit down, the kinder­garten room was a mag­net for many of us par­ents.  Abby’s unfail­ing, gen­tle smile was always filled with love and patience, for all of us.  We par­ents often felt as much under her wing as the chil­dren did.

And then, in Feb­ru­ary, it hap­pened.  Our beloved PS 234 was giv­en back to us.

The Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Admin­is­tra­tion had occu­pied the school since the evening of Sep­tem­ber 11.  On the school’s web­site there was a cal­en­dar with a smi­ley face stuck to every day the school had been open that year.  It stopped at Sep­tem­ber 10.  Who knows what state the school build­ing was in when the last of those offi­cial boots walked out the door.  We kinder­garten par­ents were not includ­ed in what must have been a mas­sive parental effort to make the school wel­com­ing again.

What I do remem­ber is the open week­end before the offi­cial reopen­ing on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 4.  With char­ac­ter­is­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty, the school’s admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply opened the doors, all week­end, and let us all re-acquaint our­selves with the school in our own time, in our own ways.  All Avery want­ed to do was run around “the yard,” the seem­ing­ly unap­peal­ing, sim­ple con­crete open area which had been the scene of such pan­ic and chaos months before.  In the months and years ahead, “the yard” would be the scene instead of hours of chalk-draw­ing, whis­pered con­fi­dences, kick­ball and even a lit­tle child­hood romance…  Around and around she ran, exor­cis­ing ghosts.

There were huge trucks parked out­side the front door of the school, loaded with fresh school sup­plies, juice box­es, prob­a­bly even a ham­ster or two.  It was very, very excit­ing, and also heart­break­ing in a way.  Start­ing over is always a chal­lenge, and we had start­ed over so many times that year.

We went inside and for some rea­son were the only peo­ple there.  The soli­tude and silence were just what we need­ed to absorb the mem­o­ries of the past, to rec­on­cile the hope and inno­cence of Sep­tem­ber 10 with the expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, the adjust­ments, tears, loss­es and gains of the inter­ven­ing five months.  The qui­et hall­ways were lined, poet­i­cal­ly, touch­ing­ly, with the dozens of Amer­i­can flags made of every mate­r­i­al you can imag­ine, from coun­tries all over the world, sent to us to cheer us up on arrival.  “Wel­come home!” they said in many lan­guages.  “You’ve got your school back!  Hip hip  hooray!”

Avery stood gaz­ing up at one of the dozens of quilts that had been sent to us, read­ing the heart­felt, empa­thet­ic mes­sages from chil­dren we would nev­er meet.  “I know it’s been hard for you, but it will get bet­ter.”  “The whole world is think­ing of you.”  “We had a hur­ri­cane in our town once and three peo­ple died, so I know how you feel.”

It was stun­ning and hum­bling to think of all the effort, all over the world, that strangers had made to cre­ate gifts for our chil­dren (and for us), to hang in our school.  I thought of all the school­teach­ers who felt help­less, imag­in­ing what they would do if their school were tak­en from them, and it must have felt so good to be able to do some­thing, to give us some­thing.  They were such inter­est­ing dona­tions: not com­mer­cial or mon­e­tary or valu­able.  They were sim­ply out­pour­ings of sym­pa­thy, and we need­ed them.

Of course there was one tan­gi­ble gift that became part of Avery’s life and has fol­lowed her every­where.  Abby Bear.

Abby Bear — dozens of Abby Bears — were sent to us by a school in Alaba­ma, and dis­trib­uted to all the kinder­gart­ners.  She has moved with us across an ocean, and to three Lon­don homes.  Some­thing tells me she’ll be mak­ing the trip to uni­ver­si­ty in four years’ time.

On our way home from the qui­et tour of our school, I asked Avery, “What do you remem­ber from that day, Sep­tem­ber 11?  Do you remem­ber any­thing special?”

Long pause.

Well, I remem­ber that I was the last one in through the red door.  And then, there was a very loud noise, and all the pigeons flew in the same direction.”

So we went back.  That Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, a cold and bit­ter day, there were many odd things to notice.  Cheer­lead­ers!  A march­ing band from the local high school!  Hun­dreds of reporters, among them a love­ly writer from Peo­ple Mag­a­zine who includ­ed us in his sto­ry.  The chan­cel­lor or com­mis­sion­er or what­ev­er he is called, of Edu­ca­tion turned up, the pres­i­dent of the PTA at whom I had so unhelp­ful­ly cursed on Sep­tem­ber 11, made a speech.  Final­ly our beloved Anna Switzer, the most for­mi­da­ble and yet warm-heart­ed prin­ci­pal any school will ever know, wel­comed us.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing any­one said because I was too busy try­ing not to cry.  Unsuc­cess­ful­ly.  Every­thing to do with Avery always makes me want to cry, but it was a bit more so that day even than usu­al.  I looked at Anna Switzer and won­dered how she had sur­vived the last five months: the wor­ry, the pres­sure, the con­tro­ver­sy over the air qual­i­ty — should we or should we not return? — on top of the usu­al prob­lems any school has, like nev­er enough mon­ey for any­thing.  Anna was inde­fati­ga­ble.  When she dis­cov­ered that Avery, a low­ly kinder­gart­ner, used hand­ker­chiefs instead of tis­sues, she gave her one.  “I col­lect them,” she explained.  Avery has it still.  Per­haps it was in her pock­et that day.

Through­out the speech­es, I felt myself dis­in­te­grat­ing a bit inside.  Here was the day we had all been wait­ing for!  Why was­n’t I com­plete­ly hap­py?  I think there was a lot of anger under­neath my gen­er­al wor­ry and fear, anger that made it hard to get to the cel­e­bra­to­ry bit.  How mon­strous it was that we should be forced into this sit­u­a­tion at all.  How unac­cept­able that we should have to stand there, feel­ing tear­ful and grate­ful and thank­ful and SPE­CIAL.  Why should John have to spell out “PS 234” in raisin toast for Avery’s birth­day?  I was sud­den­ly in the mood to throw a bowl of cere­al at her in the morn­ing and get back to being casu­al, and ordinary.

But we got through the cer­e­mo­ny.  Abby gath­ered up her charges, in all their human vari­ety and small stature.  That kinder­garten class was her first ever job.

Final­ly they went into the school, through the red door.  Avery was gone.  School was open.  And noth­ing bad happened.

We sol­diered on.  I dis­cov­ered what it was like to be part of the PS 234 com­mu­ni­ty.  The PTA — a much more bossy and vocal group than our Eng­lish school’s “Par­ents Guild” — ran the place.  We raised tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­vide our school with a library, where I worked from Day One, labelling each and every book with a bar­code so the col­lec­tion could be com­put­er­ized, for the first time.  This was the view from the win­dow of the library.

Only if you had been there before Sep­tem­ber 11 would you know that you should­n’t be able to see any sky from this win­dow.  There should be only the build­ings, as far, real­ly, as the eye could see.  These trail­ers and trucks down below housed emer­gency work­ers well into the sum­mer that year.

Dur­ing the days I spent bar­cod­ing books, there were sur­re­al moments.  An announce­ment over the loud­speak­er.  “The kinder­garten trip to Stat­en Island has been can­celled due to a bomb threat at the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty.  Pick­up at nor­mal time today.”  There was Lau­ra Bush’s vis­it to read to the chil­dren, a vis­it com­plete with escorts from the Nation­al Guard, car­ry­ing rifles and auto­mat­ic weapons into our school.

But in gen­er­al, some­thing like nor­mal life pre­vailed.  We held the annu­al Spring Auc­tion which raised mon­ey for the art and music depart­ments.  I became the head of the Book Sale which took place every semes­ter in the very hall­way where we all had stood, won­der­ing what to do, on Sep­tem­ber 11.  In that same hall­way, I read with chil­dren who were hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up.  (Actu­al­ly most­ly what I did was lis­ten to child­ish chat­ter as the kids would much rather gos­sip than read aloud.)  I was class moth­er, so I went on count­less school trips to arbore­tums, zoos, muse­ums.  Grad­u­al­ly our mem­o­ries of the school as a place of hor­ror and uncer­tain­ty became replaced with cozy, messy, shouty mem­o­ries of kids with sticky hands.  Avery became used to see­ing me at school, in school, near­ly every day.  It was the only way I could think of to cope.  It was a bit of a cheat real­ly: I was in the­o­ry “leav­ing her at school,” because I left her in the school­yard and kissed her good­bye.  But I was there.

One day John told me some­thing he had­n’t want­ed to tell me before.  He had been invit­ed to a finan­cial infor­ma­tion ser­vices break­fast at “Win­dows on the World,” the restau­rant at the top of the World Trade Cen­ter, on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11.  He had decid­ed he was too busy to go.  Every­one there died.

These adjust­ments and expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries had unex­pect­ed effects on me, per­haps on all of us.  I had my first and only ever bor­der­line sui­ci­dal thoughts.  Not that I real­ly want­ed to be dead, but some­times the over­whelm­ing pre­cious­ness of being alive, and the lin­ger­ing fear of how much we all had to lose, over­whelmed me.  I imag­ined, briefly, how much eas­i­er it would be just to throw it all away myself, take the bull by the horns, just give in, give up.  At times like that I decid­ed to think it was a nor­mal stage of griev­ing, and I retreat­ed under a duvet with a pile of cats, an old famil­iar video on the tele­vi­sion, and wait­ed out the day until it was time to pick Avery up at school.  See­ing her again always made the unspeak­able fears retreat, for a time.

Sum­mer came.  We all went back to play­ing in the park across the street from the school, where one scary evening in win­ter a team in Haz­mat suits had come to vac­u­um up the sand­box.  That’s how crazy life was in the months after we went back to school.  Some city offi­cial would wake up in the mid­dle of the night and say to him­self, “Oh my God!  That sand­box!  There could be ANY­THING in it.  Quick, get rid of it.  Maybe no one will notice us there.”  And we’d wake up to a brand­new, clean­ly filled sand­box for the first time in liv­ing mem­o­ry, when for sure neigh­bor­hood chil­dren had been squat­ting there and doing who knows what for years.

That same offi­cial, respond­ing to the pleas of still-upset par­ents, installed some sort of mag­ic air-mea­sur­ing bal­loon at the top of the school­yard.  Every once in awhile, there would be no “yard,” what we called “recess,” because some num­ber mea­sur­ing some­thing had been too high, that morn­ing.  Now, in hind­sight, I think so many of these “offi­cial” mea­sure­ments and actions were a sort of “pay no atten­tion to the man behind the cur­tain,” as we all vague­ly hoped some Wiz­ard was look­ing after us.

There were, once again, birth­day par­ties in the park, how­ev­er.  Ice cream and cake wait for no man.

On the last day of school that year, the hugs and kiss­es were fer­vent.  We said good­bye to Abby who with her per­son­al brand of emo­tion­al glue had held us all togeth­er, indi­vid­u­al­ly and as a group, since Sep­tem­ber 11.  The new school year would be a fresh start, anoth­er “first day of school.”

Every year we observe the anniver­sary, in small ways.  We watch the names being read on tele­vi­sion.  Alyssa called me the first year.  “They were on the Cs, and I had to go to the gro­cery.  When I got back, they were only on the Ms.”  Every year I speak in an email to Jen, the moth­er I stood with on the cor­ner when the plane went over.  I speak to Kath­leen, Cici’s mom, with whom I shared the whole ter­ri­ble day.  Every year I speak to my friend at Can­tor Fitzger­ald, a lit­tle about Sep­tem­ber 11, a lit­tle about art.  Here in Eng­land we go to the beau­ti­ful memo­r­i­al to the 67 British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square where the Amer­i­can Embassy looms.

Every year we ask Avery what she remem­bers and some­where along the line, the mem­o­ries (as few as they were) went from real mem­o­ries to only sto­ries being told about what she remem­bers being told she remembers.

This spring, out of the blue, the phone rang here in Lon­don as we were still unpack­ing box­es from our lat­est move.  “Hi, this is Doug, from that Cana­di­an news­pa­per who inter­viewed you and Avery in Novem­ber, after Sep­tem­ber 11.  Do you remem­ber?  You showed me the hat you bought for Avery from the Afghan store in New York, dur­ing the first part of the war.  Do you remember?”

Sud­den­ly I did.  I told him I’d call him back, scram­bled to my feet, ran up to Avery’s room at the top of the house, root­ed through her clos­et, and final­ly found it.

I called him back and he asked many ques­tions about how we had coped in the years since that day.  Avery over­heard my half of the con­ver­sa­tion and came into the room after I had hung up.  “Do you guys real­ize that I know less about Sep­tem­ber 11 than any­one else my age?  I was the only one who was there, and I don’t know any­thing about it!  It’s prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing that will ever hap­pen in my life, and I was left out of the whole thing.”

(My friend Eliz­a­beth smiled wise­ly when I told her this sto­ry.  “We hope it’s not the more inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing what will ever hap­pen to her.”  I smiled more grim­ly and said, “Maybe we don’t.  Maybe that’s as inter­est­ing as it needs to get.”)

You were four years old!” I said, imme­di­ate­ly defen­sive.  “You did­n’t have any busi­ness know­ing any­thing about it.  You were a baby!”

We talked about the day, what had hap­pened to her.  “I remem­ber the school was REAL­LY crowd­ed!”  And of course she remem­bers Abby.

Go ahead and find out any­thing you like,” we said final­ly.  Avery is an invet­er­ate news house, addict­ed to the BBC and vocif­er­ous­ly well-informed about all cur­rent events, much more so than I.

We will nev­er know if it was the right thing to do, to pro­tect and shel­ter her.  Chil­dren are resilient, every­one always tells me.  Peo­ple in gen­er­al are resilient.  One thing I cer­tain­ly learned from Sep­tem­ber 11 and the days and months and years after­ward is a sort of mod­i­fied Niet­zsche tru­ism: “That which does not kill you does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make you stronger, but you are still alive.  Get on with it.”

We con­tin­ue to try.  On this anniver­sary my great­est hope is to remem­ber, then put the mem­o­ries down by the side of the road, and walk on.

(click here to read of what hap­pened to us on the day of the events)

18 Responses

  1. Nicky McNab says:

    Must have been ter­ri­fy­ing! I felt sim­i­lar after the 7/7 bomb­ings in london.
    Real­ly enjoyed this blog Kris­ten — but it made me cry!!! x x x

  2. Sheri Riley says:

    Again, touching…moving…beautifully writ­ten. I’m glad John had the sen­si­tiv­i­ty to wait to tell you about the break­fast invi­ta­tion. You are in my prayers dur­ing this anniversary.

  3. kristen says:

    Nicky, thank you…where were you on 7/7? Thank you, Sheri, dear friend.

  4. Nicky McNab says:

    I was stay­ing with my mum but I sent a close friend from out of lon­don off on the tube that morn­ing towards liv­er­pool st before turn­ing on the news. And so fol­lowed 2 hours of hell wait­ing for her to find her way back! Thank­ful­ly the tubes had closed just before she got on.

  5. laurie says:

    of course my eyes are filled with tears now.…

  6. John's Mom says:

    I keep think­ing about what inno­cents we were in 1993, the first attack on the tow­ers. Remem­ber? We were walk­ing, W. Broad­way was it? The sirens were shriek­ing from all direc­tions and you could see a small puff of smoke. Amer­i­ca did­n’t read the fore­shad­ow­ing in that event so well. Like a mod­ern Pan­gloss, we lived in the best of all pos­si­ble worlds, and now we don’t. But we are stronger now in the ways that are impor­tant; that is so evi­dent in your telling. Keep cir­cling us around your table, Kris­ten, keep telling our sto­ries, and keep the bells ring­ing. It matters.

  7. Lynda Harker says:

    Kris­ten,
    A woman that I work with, told me a sto­ry last week, about a Nan­ny, who was in charge of a 4 yr old lit­tle girl on 9/11 and how she had pan­icked and ran to get on a fer­ry to New Jer­sey. The 4 yr old was “trau­ma­tized” and would­n’t speak for days. The fam­i­ly final­ly decid­ed to get her a dog and it brought her out of the shock. The sto­ry was fea­tured on Ani­mal Planet.
    The sto­ry remind­ed me of you and is fur­ther proof, to me, that you made a very wise deci­sion by shel­ter­ing Avery! The mem­o­ries are hard enough on the adults, hav­ing to fight off depres­sion and will­ful­ly, mind­ful­ly hav­ing to put the mem­o­ries aside! Sounds to me like Avery has been gift­ed with some incred­i­ble lov­ing and smart par­ents. Please don’t ever for­get THAT!

  8. jo says:

    Kristin, I am hum­bled by your writ­ing today. It is beau­ti­ful and from the heart. I remem­ber so very well where I was on that fate­ful morn­ing as the hor­ror was unfold­ing; at Kin­der­musik lessons with my own pre­cious 4 year old daugh­ter. I too, remem­ber the vivid per­fect blue skies of that beau­ti­ful Sep­tem­ber morn­ing before the ugli­ness rained down on our coun­try and changed us all for­ev­er. The lega­cies of that day are such a mixed bag – in some ways 9/11 brought us clos­er togeth­er as Amer­i­cans, but in a very real way, I feel, it also ush­ered in a divi­sion that I fear our coun­try may nev­er heal from. I am so ready for our coun­try to lay down the bur­den of fear – noth­ing good ever comes from it; on a cer­tain lev­el, I don’t think we can tru­ly heal as a nation until we do. Maybe that will be the task of the next 10 years.

  9. Gina Brehob says:

    Thank you for shar­ing your mem­o­ries with us. Your sto­ry was elo­quent­ly writ­ten as well as insight­ful. I tru­ly empathized with those of you embroiled in all those expe­ri­ences you described. I watched the TV hor­ri­fied, frozen in place, as the sec­ond plane flew into the sec­ond tow­er, ask­ing myself “when did this take place?” and real­iz­ing it was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing Live, at that moment. At work, I called my NY office and spoke with co-work­ers who were watch­ing out their win­dows when it hap­pened, and were still try­ing to locate miss­ing asso­ciates. “Our need and right to know” cre­at­ed such a 24/7 news fren­zy that we were all so embroiled in, it became unhealthy. It sucked us in, antic­i­pat­ing, gird­ing us up for more dev­as­tat­ing occur­rences. We became para­noid as a nation. As a par­ent, you did the prop­er thing to pro­tect your child and keep her safe and inno­cent as best as you were able, for as long as you could. When she was ready, she came to you. You nev­er hid the tragedy from her, but put it into prop­er per­spec­tive that was age appro­pri­ate. As a par­ent myself, I’ve come to the real­iza­tion we do all that we can with the resources we have at the moment, and still it may nev­er be enough. You can only do what you feel is right at the time, and pray it will be enough. She obvi­ous­ly nev­er felt fright­ened, lost or unpro­tect­ed, or she would have had last­ing trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries. You did your job well.
    I men­tioned your arti­cle was an inspi­ra­tion to me. The Scot­tish quote you shared has now become my new mantra. For too long I held onto the pain of tragedies I could do noth­ing about, and it debil­i­tat­ed me. Per­haps now I’m ready to “put my grief down by the side of the road, and walk on.” Thank you again for this inspiration.

  10. kristen says:

    Every­one, again, I am hum­bled by the hon­esty and depth of feel­ing in these beau­ti­ful com­ments. In par­tic­u­lar I thank you for your views that our pro­tec­tion of Avery — as we saw it — was the right path. Gina… DO put your grief down and walk on. It is our only path, and Lyn­da, I fear so much you are cor­rect that fear, as a nation, as put us on a path we’d rather not tread. I could eas­i­ly tread that path myself, and am so often grate­ful that I’m not relied on for pol­i­cy. Thank you all.

  11. kristen says:

    I’m sor­ry, Jo, I meant to answer your fears about fear, not Lynda’s…

  12. John's Mom says:

    Yes­ter­day I watched the the P.S. 234 com­mem­o­ra­tive video sev­er­al times because each time I had to stop just at the part where the kids talked about the gifts sent round the world to them–there were the kids with their bears and then, in the blog, Avery with her bear ten years lat­er. The strength I see in Avery is half the child her­self and half the love and wis­dom in your par­ent­ing. You did it so right.

  13. kristen says:

    John’s mom, that’s so sweet and ful­fill­ing to me for you to say that. I hope we’ve done our best. She cer­tain­ly is a strong girl/personality/temperament! xoxo

  14. Cousin Barb says:

    Kris­ten, I am speech­less, read­ing all of this. Again, because of your elo­quent, mov­ing details, I could feel myself live it with you. I so wish we did­n’t live so far apart so I could know you more.…Much love, cuz

  15. kristen says:

    Thank you, Cousin Barb. At least you’re close to my mom, who is real­ly a bet­ter ver­sion of me. :)

  16. A Work in Progress says:

    Kristin: I admire you so much. Your hon­esty about your neg­a­tive — even sui­ci­dal — thoughts is amaz­ing. Your strength of spir­it to over­come them, and your reflec­tive­ness — I just find it inspir­ing. And I feel exact­ly the same way about my daugh­ter — every­thing — every­thing(!) makes me cry (you should have seen me at her 12th bday last month, not to men­tion once again clean­ing out the toys: the Amer­i­can Girl dolls are NOT to be dis­played [sob]) so once again, you just have this way of mak­ing me FEEL what you are describ­ing. A gift!!

  17. kristen says:

    Work, I love it that you “get” what I’m doing… thank you as always. Ah, Amer­i­can Girl dolls… ours were giv­en away to huge suc­cess and appre­ci­a­tion, so… time moves on.

  1. September 11, 2013

    […] And we did.  Fol­low us here. […]

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