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We all have our September 11th stories. Mine involves a husband who worked at the World Trade Centers. 

We were both temping, having just arrived in New York City as fresh as newborn babies. My husband was temping for Silverstein Properties, the company which had just purchased the leases for the WTC buildings; he spent his days – get this – photocopying contracts and leases that would soon mean nothing. Good thing he was perpetually late to work; good thing he stopped to pack a sandwich; good thing he stepped out of the subway that morning just instants before his workplace was getting hit by planes.

So now what? He’s fine. Everyone we knew was fine. We're the lucky ones, we who don’t have anyone in particular to personally mourn. Still, every year I have to squint at the news if I want to not be weepy all day. We’re still traumatized, as a nation – anyone in doubt of that need only to look at the way 9/11 is covered in the media. But this morning, a tweet, of all things, reminded me of how to deal with the day.

Edward Champion includes two links telling two different stories of visits to the sites of tragedies: 9/11, and Pearl Harbor. No doubt the tourist smiling for pictures at the WTC site mean well. But what a good reminder, that when this country suffered a similar trauma at Pearl Harbor, it was commemorated with “remembrance and quiet dedication.”

From The News and Courier, Dec 7, 1952

The image I want to hold on to today is not New York’s busted skyline, but the idea of Hawaiian school children, quietly covering the battleship Arizona with their wreathes and flowers. As the News and Courier article says, “The people of Oahu still remember Pearl Harbor. They can’t forget, for each year there comes another December the Seventh.”

So it goes.



Read More:
The Amazing Story of the 9/11 Boatlift
A Prayer for September 11