There's No Forgetting
I know some people read this site merely to get a slice of New York life in the post-Sept. 11 realm. And today I've got one for you.

Most days, things are back to normal, but you never know when it's going to hit you again. Today it did. Unexpectedly.

This afternoon I went for a drink with a friend, who had to cover Sept. 11 close to ground zero, who is about to be transferred to another city. On our third margarita, she started to cry. And I started to cry. We're both pretty tough chicks. But the tears were this leftover fear, sadness, regret and whatever more from the people we knew who died in September and how our lives have changed and how our city has changed since then.

I got home and cried for about another half hour. And you know, that's not like me. But the reason I thought I should share this private moment is because it reminds of something this woman said I interviewed on May 30 at Christopher Street and the West Side Highway:

"It's so funny. You can go out of the city, and it's like nothing happened," said one woman on the day the ceremony was held to mark the end of the cleanup effort at the WTC.

Please, folks, remember.

Every time I used to cross 6th or 7th Avenue and instinctively look south for cars (to make sure they weren't going to run me over) I had the oppressive sense that the WTC towers weren't there. But for about the past three months, I don't notice the towers' absence, and it's only about the traffic. In some ways, that's a good thing, but it's also a very sad thing.

Look, I don't want to sensationalize my personal loss, because far more people suffered more than I did. I've just scrolled through old e-mails and found what I sent to my folks just after I returned to New York (Sept. 18). It was the foundation for a story I wrote for the paper in my hometown (where I was on Sept. 11.) I've X'd out some of the names, and pardon the spelling errors and typos. But the rest feels OK to print in the spirit of remembering what was:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm glad I'm back, as horrible as it is. Parts of our neighborhood still smell of that acrid smoke. It seems very unreal.

As I left the Port Authority yesterday and headed to Martin's office a block away on Times Square, I was thinking that things seemed pretty normal. There was extra security, but not much more than you would see if there was a big event going on in Times Square. Then walking down 42nd Street, parkway up a light post, I saw my first "Missing poster," a man in his late 40s with a big smile.

As I rounded the corner to Martin's office, there was a crowd of people looking at four color pictures spread on the sidewalk. Apparently someone was selling pictures of mangled bodies. "What? They selling that?," a teenager said as he walked by. "That's some f--ed up shit."

The Reuters office was extremely quiet, but busy. I talked to XXX (who was at our wedding) She was one of four reporters Martin sent downtown after the first plane hit. We didn't talk about that though, instead she started in on wedding disaster stories. (Her wedding dress just arrived for her Oct. XX wedding. It arrived as a size 12, was supposed to be a 4.) She was very tired, but didn't think it had all hit her yet. She said her fiancee, XX, as very angry and sometimes talks about enlisting. They both saw the buildings fall.

Martin and I left Times Square on foot and tried to get my bags from Greyhound (still missing), then realized traffic was so bad that we might as well take the subway home. So we got down to the 1 and 9 line, that normally runs to Christopher Street (and then on to the World Trade Center.) But one of the lines was initially closed due to police activity. It was running a few minutes later, but only to 14th Street, where we got off to walk home. A block from the subway, we walked by St. Vincent's hospital - the one that you saw on TV standing by in homes of receiving the trauma survivors who never came. It's at a very wide intersection that feeds in from six streets directions. At every corner of the intersection, the walls are covered with "missing" flyers and the sidewalks are covered with candles and flowers.

Lots of American flags up in windows, and people not looking where they're going -- which is not a New York thing to do. People are looking up, craning they're necks around, or so lost in thought or conversation that they sort of meander on the sidewalks.

I took a picture from the middle of our street looking south - exactly where the trade center used to be - 1.75 miles directly south. You can still see the smoke.

I showered and we went for dinner. Martin had to return a video that was due last Wednesday. Kim's Video said all late charges are waived. After dinner, we walked a block over to the White Horse Tavern (which was the historic hangout of poet Dylan Thomas) for a small get-together for a Reuters reporter's birthday.

There I found XXX, who was in he Reuters Wall Street group with me, but now works for XX. She was still bit shaken, and told me about Tuesday morning. She took a subway down to Houston (a mile away - and a safe distance away), came outside and saw one of the buildings fall. She said she ran away, and took awhile before she could start reporting the story.

As we talked, she pointed out the window, where two tow trucks were hauling two cars up the street. You said it never stops. I said it felt like I'd walked onto a movie set. I'd seen all these things on TV, and now I get here, and it surely isn't my neighborhood, but a Hollywood backlot where they've constructed a skyline without its tallest buildings, and have all these props all over the streets to fit the movie.

Then I asked if she knew anyone who was caught in it, any of our regular Wall Street sources.

And she said: Well, you know about Meehan.

I didn't. In fact, I was sure he was OK. I used to talk to Bill Meehan nearly every morning when I was writing the market curtain-raiser for Reuters. He was often the first person I talked to in the mornings and always helped me get my bearings for the day. Super nice guy, always helpful, and had a good grasp of overall market conditions. I had to call analysts about 7:20 a.m. and find out what they thought the most important factors in the market would be that day -- there weren't that many people already in the office and on the ball by then, but Meehan was, and was only about five guys we knew who would bother to talk to reporters that early.

But in Bakersfield, I did Internet searches on his name, and came up with nothing since the disaster. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, but in their Darien, Conn. office, so I figured it would have to be a long shot that he's be visiting NY that day.

But XXX said he transferred to New York two weeks earlier. She had talked to him and he was very excited about the move.

New York Newsday ran this on Thursday: Among the missing were William Meehan, Cantor's chief market strategist, whose voice mail message at his Darien, Conn., office continued yesterday to say "I'll be working out of our headquarters at the World Trade Center from now on."

She also told me that our old boss from Wall Street - who is now at XX - had a close call. His Path Train from New Jersey arrived in the basement of the World Trade Center about two minutes after the plane hit. He didn't know what happened, just that people were running and things were falling from the sky. XX said XX didn't elaborate, just that he saw "unspeakable things." She said witnesses were estimating that about 200 people jumped from the building. XXX called his wife, then for some reason decided to go back down to the subway and take the N train - he just wanted to get away. Luckily his train got out of the station and he didn't get off until Grand Central.

On our way home, I asked Martin if we could walk over to the West Side Hwy, which is just two blocks past our house. We stood on the sidewalk, watching the traffic. A block down, in the center divider was a group of about 40 people with signs, clapping and cheering the rescue workers, truck drivers, and others driving south toward the site. Coming back up were loads of Fed Ex trucks (whose Manhattan headquarters is on the West Side Highway), trucks, empty taxis, and a morgue vehicle.

Looking south, the sky was bright from the rescue lights, and the tallest building (though I don't know its name) was backlit, with the smoke rising far above its top floors. We stood there for about half an hour and said almost nothing. I tried for a long time not to cry, but when I started, couldn't stop.

"It's just so sad. All those people," was all I could say.

- posted by Amy @ 6/24/2002 07:56:00 PM