Remembrance: The Great Walk

Originally posted on 9/11/2010.  Reposted on 9/11/2011, the 10 year Anniversay, in dedication to the First Responders who are still experiencing the effects of their courage and still losing their lives today.  I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for what you have done and for all that you do.  May the powers that be do the right thing, and give you the healthcare and support you need.

Too Many Stories

 I had never intended to write about it, and I hope no one will ever have to experience anything like it again.  Neither in our nightmares nor in our realities.  But there is something about that day that I always want to remember.

I hesitate, because as far as stories go, there are more than can be accounted for.  And there is no way to do them justice.  They are too surreal, too personal and too emotionally diverse.  But there are many stories that I remember and honor on this day.  From the story of a friend who lost hold of his coworker’s hand as he tried to save him but never saw him again.  To the man who was the last one on the elevator as it left the 84^th floor.  He watched as the door closed on his coworkers who patiently waited for the next car -- each unaware that this elevator car was the last.  When he got outside, he saw the 2^nd plane blow a hole through his workplace.  It is the story of a friend who felt the heat of explosion and without knowing what had happened, left all of her belongings and got onto a ferry.  She didn’t pause to look up as many so fatefully did.  That instinct saved her life.  The story continues with a stranger who pushed a lucky man into the doorway of the neighboring building.  This stranger threw himself on top of my friend as the rubble crashed where they had just been walking.  The two men then ran to in separate directions, my friend to safety, the other, who knows.  It is the story of my coworker who flew in from L.A. on the red eye.  He left less than 2 hours before the high-jacked plane.  He awoke from his nap at 8:51 a.m. thinking he had been buried alive.  He rescued one neighbor's dog; then he and another neighbor huddled in the kitchen as the towers fell around them.  Ironically, he could have lost his life twice that day, but died unexpectedly 6 years later.  It is the story of the firemen who rushed in as others rushed out – many losing more than 100 of their friends.  Families upon families, devasted.  The stories go beyond each person, and beyond New York -- to Washington, Pennsylvania and around the world.  Too many stories to do any of them justice, even in their telling and retelling, even though the stories need to be told and remembered.  One story that I wish to remember here is the one about the millions who walked, including a man who walked 20 or so miles back to his wife who gave birth on September 12, 2001.

The Questions

It seems like you either lost everyone or no one that day.  I was one of the lucky ones.   I had worked in the World Financial Center for seven years before changing jobs a couple of years earlier.  The towers weren't just towers to me, nor were they to most anyone else.  When I walked out of the office around noon, a sea of stunned people filled the streets.  No cabs.  No cars.  No subway nor bus.  No phone service.  All of us wondering where the people we loved might be and if they lived.  Just a sea of every color, creed, religion, character, head covering, political belief, age and marital status – all walking together. 

I walked with my friend Andy.  What a gift he was and is.  By the time we emerged onto the street, survivors from lower Manhattan had made it to our position on 36^th Street and 8^th Ave. Every color, creed, religion, character, political belief, head covering, age and marital status -- they were covered in the ash of the buildings.  They were covered in the ash of their fellow human beings.  Stunned, grey ghosts from every walk of life emerged and walked with us to the Upper West Side or to Queens or to the Bronx.  Some walked all day.   All walked next to someone who could inspire suspicion, and all walked next to someone who had just lost a loved one, but didn't know it yet.  All were walking somewhere.  I walked a mere mile and a half.  Another good friend, J.D. walked 8 miles just to sleep on my couch so I wouldn’t be alone.  Another gift I will never, ever forget.

As we walked, we strangers and friends worked out our feelings toward one another.  We remembered what we had learned about each other when working side by side, by doing business together, by talking daily about politics, prices and the weather.  We remembered who we are.  There was no room for hatred based upon assumptions or misunderstandings.  We knew too many people had died.  Too many people relied upon each other.  We, the strangers who walked, helped each other measure the health of both our trust and mistrust – using experience, behavior and instinct as our guide, not ignorance, fear and pride.  To say there was no evil afoot, no crazy extremism in our neighbors would be foolish.  The weekly bomb threats on our blocks kept reminding us of that.  But we, the strangers, and we the friends, were each other’s support.  I’ll never forget how a co-worker’s Catholic husband insisted that his Muslim wife not wear her scarf – he did not want her to become a target of violence.  He wanted her to be safe.  She wanted to respect her faith and be herself.  They compromised on a baseball cap.  A coworker walked her to work for months until potential danger toward her had quieted.  I’ll also never forget the many faces, accents and cultures who later gathered spontaneously around a radio in a cab or in front of a store window TV – all talking, all sharing information, all measuring our suspicions and all participating in multi-cultural solidarity.  

And I think this happened partly because we couldn’t get into our cars and separate ourselves. 

The Remembrance

I love New York because it is a city where people tell it like it is, no matter what their opinion might be (and they often show it, too).  Though New Yorkers crowd the streets every day, it is usually in equal but opposite directions.  If a brilliant architect or engineer could look at the movement of the city from an aerial perspective, I’m sure they could find some divine pattern that simply seems like chaos on the ground.  But that day, 8 million people from every imaginable demographic not only all walked, we walked together -- unmistakeably -- in the same direction. 

I learned a great life lesson from my fellow New Yorkers that day.  Not a political one.  And not a religious one.  As the shock hit, as the American flags flew up around us, as the military entered the subway, as the food dwindled in the stores and restaurants, and as the black cloud of ash entered our lungs and then circled our lives for months-- there could have been retaliation, violence – but there wasn't.  We simply walked.

It was powerful, it was strange, and it was comforting.  So I find myself writing today.  Because no matter how crazy things get, no matter how many opinions, viewpoints and shouting matches there are, no matter how the facts are gotten right, gotten wrong or are warped …. I want to remember how good people can be, how rationally and intelligently we all can behave.  Amidst the horrible acts that people do and teach each other to do, I want to remember how we can walk together without ego, without hatred and with a humble awareness of what we might not know.  Yes, we need to be smart.  To protect ourselves.  But my hope is that we can walk together toward who and what we love instead of in opposition to what we think we hate. I hope instead of taking a "position", we can look at our humanness and learn.  I hope we can help each other do that, too.  Because in spite of (or because of) our different experiences, we really need each other.  We really do.

In dedication to all who lost their lives and loved ones.



The Apple and The Vagabond

I had been living in New York for only a few weeks, and everything was new, interesting, strange and sometimes terrifying.  But the patchwork of the city, the sounds, the sights, the differences -- and the lessons I knew I would be learning – all of this won my heart.  I stayed for 15 years.

My first home was in  Washington Heights.  My first subway stop was 181^st and Broadway and my train was the famous A Train.  My first New York neighborhood had a rich history.  Legend had it that in 1629 the Dutch bought Manhattan Island from the Lenape Indians just north of where I lived (check this cool document out here).  In the 1900s Irish immigrants settled there, and in the 1930’s and 40’s, European Jews had moved in to escape Nazi persecution.  In the 1950’s & 60’s, Greek immigrants joined the neighborhood; and then African Americans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans all enriched the next decades with their restaurants and ways of life.  When I lived in Washington Heights in 1990, Dominicans added their music to the mix. That’s one of the things I love about New York – remnants of each one of these cultures were very much alive when this naïve Midwestern “immigrant” arrived with a U-Haul and was dropped off by a generous college friend named Mike.

One of the strongest memories of those first few weeks was the rather long walk to the subway station.  I moved to my new hood in the fall.  Fall brought the boomerang effect of hurricane season, and the new habit of throwing away umbrellas like scrap paper, arriving to work soaking wet, and the lesson that not all shoes survive the concrete jungle. 

 

(The hill on the trek to the subway station)

Nearly every night on the way back to my apartment, I would stop at the butcher and then shop in a small grocery (when your legs are your vehicle, you keep your load light.)  Nearly every night I would pass the same man sitting on the street.   He had wild hair and a cardboard box.  Nearly every night he would greet me with a nod of his head.  I would smile back and say “hello”.  It was deep into the 90’s recession and jobs were tough to find.  I was working as a temp – and had experienced for the first time in my rather privileged life what it meant to have to choose between a $3.79 chocolate bar and a $2.79 per pound chicken.  (The butcher informed me that I wouldn’t survive long if I always chose the chocolate over the chicken.)

So when I passed this man on the street, I wanted to share something with him, and I thought that it should be healthy, good-for-him and something that I could easily afford. 

I gave him an apple.

Nearly every night for about a month, I gave this man an apple and he nodded in thanks.  In fact, he was quite gracious about it.

One night, however, he directly refused.

 “Ma’am, you giith me am appow EVERWY day, buh ladhy, I AIN GOTH NO TEETH!!  How you e’spek me thoo eath THATH??

Sure enough, this man had no teeth whatsoever.  I felt incredibly foolish.  He seemed very passionate about his refusal (and I found myself wondering what happened to all of those apples).  So I looked in my bag and tried to think of something that he could most definitely gum and swallow without hurting himself.

I gave him a banana. 

When I passed him the next night I gave him two bananas (you know, to make up for the gaff with the apples).

I passed him for another couple of weeks and kept giving him a banana.  Once I gave him the whole bunch (you know, to make up for the gaff with the apples.) He always thanked me.  I always said, “You are welcome.”  He had called me Ma’am.  No one had ever called me that before.  I wasn’t old enough to be a Ma’am.

One day he looked irritated.  “Oh dear, he is probably sick of bananas.” I thought to myself.

“Ladhy, I shure dhoo apprethiate the banana, but you gith me one EVERWY day and now I have DIARRHEA!!!”

Oh.  My.  I guessed that made quite a bit of sense.  And would be quite a problem.  (But I was happy he was at least eating the bananas.  He needed the potassium, I was sure.)  I did not know appropriate non-diarrhea-producing, gum-friendly foods that didn’t need a blender.  So I asked, “Well, what could I do for you then that could help?” 

“I wannha go to Mac Donald’s.”  He said with toothless certainty.  McDonald’s was about a mile away.  It was night.  I was tired.  How on earth would he eat a hamburger?  Besides, it was not the safest walk with some strange man who had an aversion to fruit and who’s home was most definitely on the street.  So I asked him to find something in the grocery on that block instead.

“I will buy you one thing.”  I said, in an attempt to keep control of the situation. “What would you like?”

He wandered around for about 5 minutes looking and looking.  He really studied the shelves, measured his need and was thoughtful, I supposed.  The grocery store owner, however, was quite upset with me for bringing him in.  He was not an uncompassionate person, but apparently he was tired of the man trying to steal stuff from this store.

The apple man came out with a box of Hostess Ho Ho’s.

“Seriously?  Ho Ho’s?” 

“I like Ho Ho’s,” he said with a determined smile.  Ho Ho’s it is then.  So, I bought him the familiar box and thought, “Hmm.  I’m not the only one whose natural instinct is to choose chocolate over nutrition.” 

But I didn’t feel at all helpful, and could not emulate my butcher who had knocked some sense into my “budget”.  This guy had no budget. 

I passed him one more time after that and said nothing to him.   And he said nothing to me.  I didn’t know what to say or what to do.  I felt a little powerless. He seemed to feel the same.  We didn't have the skills to relate to each other.   I had also registered the fear in the grocer’s face -- a fear absent in me until I saw the experience in him. 

After that, I never saw my apple vagabond or his box of Ho Ho’s again.      

I used to wonder what happened to him.  I was pretty sure he was not off the street, did not have any dental work done and was still getting inappropriate food items from ignorant strangers.  But who knows.  Unlikely things happen all the time and I hope that his circumstances were bettered in some way.  I’m also quite sure that he does not remember me like I remember him.  It would be very odd if he did.  Because sometimes an apple is just an apple, and a banana is . . . well, it really just doesn’t agree with you.