As a kid growing up in Queens, my Mom loved taking us into the city to break up the routines of normal everyday life of working hard, going to school and the effects off my Papa's drinking on our family.
In the 70's a time when New York has been remembered as a dark period (no 1977 New York City blackout pun intended) this is the New York most of us native New Yorkers remember.
I'd pass the time by drawing what I saw. The skyline of New York city, the Empire State Building, The Chrysler building, the corporate commuter helicopter landing on the Pan Am Building, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, etc.
One fall Sunday, she decided it was time to visit the newly completed World Trade Center. I'd already known by age of 5, that by just going out on our firesecape, I was afraid of heights, and disappointgly knew I wouldn't become a fireman which I thought was the coolest job to have as a grownup. :-( Even so we made the trek from Astoria downtown to Cortlandt Street. The RR. One subway. Awesome.
Once we got out into the street, I was amazed, looking up into the sky putting my chin along one the towers silver edges and following it up into the heavens. We went inside, waited on line, and took the elevators up to the 110th floor, the top, the observatory deck of the south tower. I gingerly walked around and took all the sights. Uptown, Brooklyn, Queens, the Statue of Liberty, Jersey, etc. We were on top of the world! My sister took the above picture on that day.
Flash forward 24 years later. September 11, 2011. After seeing both American flight 11 and United 175 crash into and destroy the towers, from Park Row, near City hall, all I could think of was that I was one of countless visitors to the observatory deck. I'd stood up there with my parents in 1977! I'd felt what I thought was the heated breeze of the explosion of Flight 175 on my arms. Was I just imagining that? Was the explosion that massive that we all felt it down here on the street?
I was in shock, speechless and afraid again amongst the crowds of devastated onlookers.
I was in shock, speechless and afraid again amongst the crowds of devastated onlookers.
In shock and knowing it would soon be a disaster scene, I decided to try to get home. After taking the uptown 6 train and making it as far as Grand Central, everything stopped, including public transportation. As I walked around watching people in the streets, telling each other what was going on, I reached into my right short pocket. I realized I was out of cigartettes. I walked to the closest deli I could find and contemplated buying a beer while paying for my Newport Lights. I'd only been 5 years, clean and sober. I thought if I was gonna die, I was gonna get drunk one last time.
I chose not to.
And thankfully so.
As walked back to 40th and Park. There was my Mom wandering around with everyone else to watch a building's lobby t.v., listen to someone's radio, etc. I quickly thought about how much more devastated my Mom would've been if I'd walked up to her, forty in a brown paper bag, drinking....
We looked at each other, hugged and cried.
At amost that exact moment we heard the rumble of a fighter jet's engines, and still hugging my Mom, I asked God for it to be one of ours. I found out later this was the US Air National Guard's F-15 that had been scrambled from Otis AFB in Massachusetts and screamed down to New York City . It was too late.
Both my parents have passed away since, my father from liver cancer in 2007, and my Mom from Lou Gehrig's disease in 2009. They spent the last of their years in a post-9/11 world.
My father in denial that towers were gone, angered at CNN's images of Osama bin Laden sitting on the couch, weakened by his chemo, and my Mom somberly listening to the "reading of the names" lying unable to move in her bed, every very year after that.
I miss them and love them so much.
Ten years gone...9/11/01-9/11/11. I'll never forget the day we all stood on the South Tower of the World Trade Center, observatory deck scared of being up so high.
We'll all never, ever forget... 9/11/01
Peace & love....
