It’s been a few years since I spent 9/11 in New York. I remember it like it was yesterday. Here is my story.
The year was 2001 and I felt like my life was finally coming together. After years of undergraduate drama I was accepted into NYU as a transfer student, a school I had always wanted to attend. I was going to be a creative psychologist (ala Catherine Tremell…Basic Instinct is my favorite movie, more on that later).
I was living in the Water Street dorms: a gorgeous upscale apartment building by the South Street Seaport. On one of the upper floors, I had a great view of the financial district including the Twin Towers.
Unfortunately, my time at NYU was short lived. I couldn’t afford the tuition and the financial aid department was playing hardball. I went back to my miserable existence on Long Island.
On that fateful Tuesday, I was working at a local car wash. I worked the morning shift on Tuesdays and starting around 9 a.m. things started to get weird. People came in talking about planes “flying low” in the city, but no one seemed to know exactly what was going on. It wasn’t until hours later it became clear someone intentionally flew planes into the Twin Towers. My relief came in, and she was traumatized. I went home and spent the rest of the day glued to the TV and on the phone making sure loved ones who were in the city made it home OK (they shut down the mass transit, including the Long Island Rail Road).
I couldn’t help but think about my NYU dorm room. What if I was looking out the window and saw the planes crash into the building? Would I have ran away from the cloud of smoke or ran closer to see what was going on?
This is the part of the story where I tell you my father is a retired Port Authority detective: he spent his career capturing terrorists, long before Al-Qaeda became part of the American lexicon. He had only retired a few years earlier. The Port Authority offices were housed in the Towers; had the attacks happened a few years earlier there’s a high probability he could’ve been in the building that morning.
The following days after 9/11 were some of the craziest of my life. To hear the stories of the heroes, especially those who went into the buildings before they collapsed really made me question life…the meaning of it all. I couldn’t have been that brave.
A few weeks ago, a friend came to visit and she really wanted to go to see ground zero, she had never been. But we never made it downtown…on some level I’m glad we didn’t (it’s still eerie for me to go down there).
Eight years later and back in New York, I’m in a completely different place in my life. I still don’t know what it all means, but I do know one thing: in times of great despair, there is still hope. I am a living testament of that. Not only did I eventually finish my undergraduate education, but I now have a Master’s degree, a feat many black men in America unfortunately don’t accomplish. In good health both mentally and physically, I am truly blessed.
If you were in New York the weeks after the attacks, you know how the tone changed: a palpable outpour of love, respect and service. The change was visible and tangible. I hope we can go back to that place…where regard for fellow human beings is not only a task we’re all willing to take up, but a priority.
And next time, I hope a tragedy doesn’t have to occur to get us there.
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