 |
|
Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
|
|
 |
Monthly Column... |
by
Jeff Stimpson
September 11th, 2002, was first mentioned to me by my company's boss in a major meeting last week. "September 11th is a Wednesday this year," he told us. "We thought perhaps a company-wide moment of silence, but we're still deciding what to do."
Join the club. In a few days, we will mark the first anniversary of the day I ducked out of my office -- moments before they locked everyone in -- and hoofed it to pick up Alex at his school. One year since I turned around at East 17th Street in time to see the second tower go in a Hindenburg of gray ash, the silver confetti of the tower's siding sprinkling lower Manhattan.
One year since we had one TV station, as we didn't have cable and the transmitter of all networks but CBS was on the south tower. One year since we spent the crystalline afternoons of the rest of that week letting Alex and Ned run the playgrounds while we listened to the cobblestone roar of Navy fighters over Manhattan.
I went to lower Manhattan last fall, when the junkyard still stood seven stories high, the now-famous scorched girders grasping for the sky. Gray snow dusted the bank signs. National Guardsmen and cops kept people moving. Nobody spoke much. Workers had spray-painted WEAR YOUR BREATHING MASKS! on one of the buildings abandoned nearby. I had no breathing mask, and the place smelled dirty and cold. Somebody said it smelled like lost souls.
I remember the phone calls, from my brother in Maine and from friends in Buffalo and Boston. "I saw the second tower fall," I told them all, mentioning how the street around me howled at the sight. I polished the story with humor, telling how when I got to his classroom, Alex was crying. "It didn't have anything to do with the World Trade Center," I added, "he just hated school."
It was all in the delivery. Still is, every time I tell the story, which is as often as possible between swallows of wine and bites of cheddar. I'm proud of what I saw. I was there, more or less, after all.
I'm still here, and so is my family. New York has been called a lot of things over the past 12 months, from "brave" and "courageous" to "the big bull's-eye." You couldn't avoid a lot of the bull's-eye talk. At least twice after the anthrax attacks, the subway was snarled by investigations of mysterious white powders on platforms. (One turned up sugar from a doughnut.) Well into last spring, whenever I drew the boys' bath, I remembered the rumors about poisoning our water supply. Just a month ago, the Times ran a story about what would happen should somebody set off a small nuclear device in the Lincoln Tunnel, "incinerate" and "barbecue" apparently being two of the author's favorite verbs.
"They don't have a bomb, because they would have used it!" I still proclaim a year afterward, along with "Bloodiest morning on U.S. soil since Antietam!?" That impresses most people, who have no idea what "Antietam" was. I sip my wine.
"There are so many of them willing to die," Jill says.
"And there are many of us willing to kill them," I reply, for this is war, and, as U.S. Grant said, "Take no backward steps!"
In its Burning Twin Towers special edition a year ago, Time proclaimed that we would need a "relentless sense of vengeance that wouldn't leak away in a week or two." It didn't leak away, I guess, but the war does seem fainter, the vigilance like it's a step behind. Flashing my driver's license to enter hospitals today, or removing my shoes before boarding the plane more resemble short-sighted corporate policies than measures of national defense. We've also rushed that bad day into history, as if enshrining an event is the best defense against it happening again.
That, and talking about future attacks in whispers.
I for one don't think they'll hit us on this Sept. 11th. "They never hit you when you're looking for them!" I say over the wine. They say Grant found courage in a bottle, too.
All we know for sure is, this year, it's a Wednesday. Here in New York, they're calling for a city-wide moment of silence (Wall Street could sure use that), and Rudy Giuliani will read aloud a list of the victims. I imagine the cops will be busy with pranks. I imagine Alex and Ned will be busy on a playground.
It will be a quiet day, with luck. Not the quiet of a day off, but the quiet that fills your ears when you're holding your breath.
Copyright 2001 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
|
|
 |
