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Secrets of Golf Waynflete Alumni Magazine University of Maine Bar Harbor Times > back to main articles page |
Guest Column/Bar Harbor Times
article by Nancy Manter
For those of you who were not in New York to observe the second memorial tribute on Sept. 11, I am writing to share something from our family's experience, as we still live down here in Tribeca. Each year there is "another era past," says my 12-year-old son, Johnny, and we try and make sense of an event that is so emotional, complex and yet a state of reality here and all over the world. We are one place amongst so many that have been terrorized, traumatized and are rebuilding - a process that marks us globally as well as in my own person life.
Last night at nine, my husband Eduardo, Johnny and I, joined the "candlelight (flashlights covered in paper bags) walk," starting at Union Square and ending up surrounding the site of Ground Zero.
There was a spectacular full moon out and a sighting of Mars, even in a city lit by large lights shining down into the pit of Ground Zero. People seemed to have clustered in families, in groups of friends, and around open holes of mesh to peer down into the "footprints" of disaster. Some were holding hands and trying to create a huge circle around the site, but we continued walking, totally surprised and awed by the passages that had been open for public viewing.
On one side was what was once World Trade 7, a place I had often walked by to enter my bookstore, my drugstore, and my bank vault down under World Trade 2. Illuminated by harsh light under dark skies, Johnny commented how eerie it all seemed, like a movie set or an unknown surreal place. The new building was already a few stories high, built in harsh concrete without windows, and with wire stakes and structures sticking out the top, preparing for the next level. I thought of skeletons, or barbed wire, and I wondered when the windows would begin to be part of the design. It seemed so sterile and institutional, as I tried to remember where I had once walked. Johnny was beginning to talk about his memories while Eduardo stopped to peer into the place he had given up on.
On our left as we were heading west was the Ground Zero site lit up, looking like an ancient ruin, that had been excavated and patched up. I kept trying to recall what the most recent decision was about the footprints and the design for the memorial, but it already looked like there was a business plan in place. Where was the memorial site to be? Roads had been carved to make way for trucks and there was already a structure being built to make way for the path train. I tried to recall the watch store I had bought a Swatch watch the day before 9/11. Memories of passing through these buildings almost on a daily basis seemed so distant.
We continued on to the winter garden in the financial building to get another perspective, and maybe to hang on to something we had known before, even if it had been redesigned at the top. The palm trees were new, smaller but greener. They must have figured out how to care for them. On the other side was the large view of the winter garden which seemed particularly grand at night with the reflections of light and dark sky. Johnny remembered the concerts his babysitter used to take him to and where Santa Claus sat.
I remembered the strolls I used to take with him when he was barely a month old. Eduardo had not visited the winter garden since 9/11 and he seemed so perplexed and thoughtful. He finally talked about other countries, other places and people in the world who had suffered such loss, a global perspective.
There were so few people where we stood, making it seem all the more strange, as though we were removed and alone, something so rare down by Ground Zero. We continued our walk home, past the where the wash station was for the vehicles coming out of Ground Zero, and the large ditch where we had visited construction workers nightly, and where I once even saw a worker climb into his truck, take out a set of bagpipes and begin playing "Amazing Grace." How lucky, how haunting and how very sad it seemed that one could be creating such profound beauty and at the same time have such monumentally exhausting and emotional work to be done. So much of the cleanup was done by these workers, without any of the technologies, tools and gadgets we all take for granted. I am reminded how far and how little we have come in this world, still hauling debris in pails, shovels and in our hands.
We passed by the blue memorial lights that had been shown last year. They were less geometric, Twin Towers-like, projected into the sky in transparent strands of blue-gray against dark skies. We spent a lot of time looking up through them, tracking millions of insects that fluttered and swirled up to infinity. It was good to see that last, and to see our local movie theater still in business.
I am still amazed at how close, how deep and how large it all is and how close to my back yard. How present it becomes and then fades back, as we assume our daily lives in Tribeca. The bells are tolling by my studio today, a place I have chosen to spend, just slightly removed from Ground Zero, a safe place to be.