the news

What a strange morn­ing to wake up to here in Lon­don, more than 3000 miles from where I was on just such a per­fect blue-sky day nine years and sev­en months ago.

I can under­stand the jubi­la­tion of those peo­ple whose loved ones died that day, or whose jobs involved dig­ging out the rub­ble or pro­tect­ing all of us New York­ers from future harm, those with loved ones in the brave armed forces.  They must feel a real sense of jus­ti­fied revenge, a life tak­en in return for so much that was tak­en from them.

I myself would have pre­dict­ed I’d be jubi­lant today.  The wish­es of that man meant the destruc­tion of my neigh­bor­hood, the loss of my lit­tle daugh­ter’s school, the removal of the sense of safe­ty and a hap­py future that seemed to belong to most Amer­i­cans on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001.

But I am not jubi­lant.  I feel instead a wish to turn my eyes and ears away from the news.

On the day, and for some months after­ward, I had some sense of our gov­ern­ment and par­tic­u­lar­ly our Pres­i­dent as a father fig­ure: there to pro­tect us, and if that failed, to hunt down the one who had harmed us and exact jus­tice.  The way you go home after some­one’s bul­lied you at school, and your father picks up the phone, or walks down the street, hold­ing your hand if you’re brave enough to go with him, and he con­fronts the bul­ly and even his par­ents, and an apol­o­gy is offered, pun­ish­ment is promised, a les­son learned.

As the months and then years went by, I was as scared as any­one — more so.  I love New York City with all my heart, and to see the gap­ing wound in our pre­cious neigh­bor­hood caused a dai­ly, hourly stab of pain that took a great deal of time to lessen.  I was made of The Wrong Stuff, imag­in­ing that the ter­ror­ists had tar­get­ed me and my fam­i­ly, would fol­low us wher­ev­er we went.  I spent far too much time wor­ry­ing about whether I’d rather be blown up on a bridge or in a tun­nel while mak­ing my way to New Jer­sey.  Every day at school pick­up I breathed a sigh of relief that anoth­er day of sep­a­ra­tion from my child was over and I could take her home and be the pro­tec­tor myself.

No father could help me with the bul­ly.  I was on my own.

And we all did con­front the bul­ly.  We con­tin­ued to go to work, to take our chil­dren to school, to go down the sub­way steps under the streets of New York, to start up new busi­ness­es and look to the future.  We rebuilt our lives and came out on the oth­er side hav­ing looked the worst in the eye and said, “You can­not ruin my life.  I am still here.”

Now the bul­ly is dead.  A dif­fer­ent father from the one we expect­ed has exact­ed revenge, I sup­pose.  But we have come so far, to recov­er on our own, that I am not pre­pared to go back to who I was near­ly ten years ago and feel sat­is­fac­tion at the death of a per­son I’ve worked so hard to thwart.  It took me a long time to rejoice in a per­fect blue-sky day again, and that is exact­ly what I am going to do, today, hold­ing all my fel­low New York­ers in my heart.