Couldn’t Forget If I Tried

How has it been 20 years?

I was all set to write about fall in New York (“Big Fall Energy” was my working headline). Yesterday, I dropped my kids off for their first day of school in the morning. (Yes, we took a pic. No, we didn’t have one of those “1st Day of [Insert Grade]” signboards.) Then in the evening, I went to an opening for Annie Leibovitz’s new book Wonderland. There was the photographer Annie Leibovitz, there was the writer Fran Lebowitz, and there were other bold-faced names that didn’t end in “itz.” Anna Wintour even said, “Hi” to my wife. It was one of those cool cultural New York nights that make the city so special and seem to be occurring with (fingers crossed) more frequency.

But then I realized I had to write about September 11. 

As I type this, I’m not sure what I’m going to say. More talented writers have done it before and better. But yet it feels very necessary.

Even after 22 years, I still get uncomfortable calling myself a New Yorker. If you’re a transplant like me, I’ve felt that other people can apply that title to you, but you can’t apply it to yourself. That’s why I’m so jealous of my kids because they’ll always get to say that they were “born and bred” in New York City. But if there’s one thing that makes me feel that I’ve earned the right to call myself a New Yorker, it’s that I was here on September 11, 2001.

And tomorrow that will be 20 years ago. 

I can still remember so many details of that day. Walking to work through Central Park. Hearing a fire engine siren blaring louder than I’d ever heard before as I walked past Carnegie Hall but having no idea what that sound portended. Seeing a colleague in the elevator who mentioned that there’d been a plane crash at the Twin Towers. Getting to my desk and turning on my TV (at Sports Illustrated, we all had TVs at our desks, which was quite the perk). Trying repeatedly to get through to my parents because my father worked in downtown D.C. at the time (he ended up walking home). 

Once it became clear that regular work would not be getting done that day, I walked to my friends’ apartment on West 68 St where I ranted in anger before going to my own apartment on West 74 St where I doomwatched CNN while checking in on friends and being checked in on by friends. The day ended at a bar called Dive 75, where I ran into a friend from high school, who was covered in dust having made his way up from his office near the financial district. We hadn’t been particularly close growing up, but I was so overjoyed to see him and he me. On the rare occasions that I’ve run into him since that moment still deeply connects us.

Later I would learn that an acquaintance from college had died. Later still I would go to his funeral in Montclair, NJ. And every year since I’ve watched the reading of the names to make sure that I catch his.

None of these memories are particularly unique—everyone who was in New York City that day has their own version of them—but they are incredibly formative. They have shaped many aspects of who I am today. 

When you learn about major historical events in school, they feel very far away. You can understand them intellectually, but not emotionally. It’s only when you live through them that they become real in such a personal way. My kids will never truly understand why their dad cries in the morning while watching TV once a year, but they will likely have some experience in their lives that moves them in a similar way.