so for lack of better words, i'll use my old ones...
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i was born a new yorker even though i was born in illinois.
the blood of its history, its people, its culture, its stories has always coursed through my body.
i grew up with tales from my grandfather about the wonders of new york city. during my childhood, when my mother and i lived with him, he would talk for hours about his childhood in brooklyn and about being a young man in a city that never sleeps. he sincerely loved that city; an immigrant, it was america for him. he never got to go back before he died.
his admiration was contagious. in mid-august of 2001, i ventured to my grandfather's golden city for the first time. i say begrudgingly that he did not do it justice. it was everything and more. being there was like completing the edge pieces on the puzzle of my life... letting me finally start on the center... on the real meat.
it was like being home.
on august 11, my friend angela and i went down to the harbor to squint at the statue of liberty from across the water. we investigated cheap t-shirts for loved ones back in illinois, and from the safety of a bench while munching on baguettes and curling our toes on our flip-flops, we watched the hustle of grey suits, marching to the humming beat of business. we breathed in new york, and it exhaled a new life into us. it was like spiritual cpr. all, quite unknowingly to us, under the iconic presence of the twin towers.
a month later, from a small living room in illinois, i watched as they disappeared. as beth cried for her dad's colleagues who surely died upon initial impact, i was silent. unflinching. clearly shaken, but not falling. not yet.
and for the boy who hadn't noticed them in the first place, it wasn't the physical absence of the towers that shook me when i returned to new york some years later. it was as i walked alone by the site that i finally fell. standing there breathing, i could taste, smell, feel the difference this had made in new york... in the world. teetering from the drama of it all, i was eventually brought to my knees. i stayed there for quite some time, staring into the pit and remembering everything from that day and days before.
the smell of jet fuel. screaming and tears.
glass thunder and rain made of those grey suits.
a wall of smoke. darkness at 10 am.
my grandfather's golden city, sleeping for the first time.
i don't remember getting back up... i only know that, like the city itself, i did.
posted by brett @ 9:22 AM
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