" A Hole in the City's Heart"On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in my first couple of weeks of grad school in Newark, NJ -- a city that is connected to the World Trade Center by a 30-minute ride on the PATH train. I had recently quit my job in midtown Manhattan to go back to school full time. While I worked in Manhattan, I lived in Jersey City and commuted to midtown everyday via the PATH, then caught the E train uptown at the WTC. Like a lot of people, Manhattan was where I had my first job after college and my commute through the WTC everyday represented much of that coming-of-age feeling and was the perfect snapshot of all my ambitions in that moment in time.
One of my favorite memories of New York was the rush and excitement of stomping up those stairs from the PATH train to the subway trains couple levels up surrounded by mobs of people rushing to work. No matter I was never a morning person, rushing up those escalators (stairs on a good day) with all those men and women in dark suits and long trench coats holding their morning Starbucks always made me feel instantly alive, awake, and ready to conquer the world.
That morning at school, I woke up in my dorm room and showered to get ready for my 9:30 AM class. I shared a suite with 3 other girls who were all in the same class as me. At 9AM, one of my roommates shouted "Oh my god... the World Trade Center is on fire!" I ran into her room with my hair dripping wet and stood frozen in front of the 16-inch TV. I stared at the screen and couldn't understand what I was seeing. One of the towers was smoking and I blurted out, "What is that? Is that happening now?" None of my roommates answered because they couldn't make sense of what was going on either.
18 minutes later, we watched the second plane crash into the South Tower. Looking back now, that was such a critical moment when things started to spiral. But, at that time, we never imagined that things were going to get as bad as they did. We talked about what we saw on TV and kept getting ready for school.
By the time we got to school (about 10 minutes later), it seemed like the world was falling apart. There were people standing in front of the schoolfrantically calling on their cell phones. One of the towers had collapsed. Classes were officially cancelled. Many of our professors lived in either Manhattan or the other boroughs of New York City so they were unable to come in. Students who already arrived from the City for their early classes were now trapped in New Jersey and could not get home. Rumors that the school was bringing in mattresses for students who couldn't go back home so that they could stay overnight at the school. Everyone at the dorms started offering their rooms for classmates to crash. We could see the smoke from the WTC from the top of our building. We all turned around started walking home back to the dorms... this time with about 10-15 more students... to sit back in front of the TV.
Things became a blur after that. The second tower collapsed, the Pentagon was hit, Washington Mall, Pennsylvania.... as things got increasingly worse, I became a bit sick from thinking of my friends in the City who I still could not reach because all the cell phone lines were clogged, and I didn't receive anything on email. My school became a triage center for victims from the City. By 1PM, I was finally able to make connections with my friends in the City and in Washington, D.C.
As each year passes and 9/11 gets farther and farther away, I start forgetting details of the day's events after that morning, but I always remember the people that were in my life on that day and whose safety made me wrought with worry. Every single one of the friends I called that day have either moved out of New York or D.C. and now live in Boston, Chicago, and California. Some of the friendships have grown stronger, some I'm not as in frequent contact with, and with one.... a romance has fizzled. But on Sept. 11 of each year, I call those same people that I called on 9/11 just to say hi and see how they are. They don't always think about 9/11 like I do and I don't always bring it up. We catch up and tell each other what's new or what's not. The conversation is usally meaningless and most times my call will go straight to their voicemail. But somehow that little personal ritual always makes me feel glad that they were safe on that day so that I can make the call today.
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