September 11 Reflection

Twenty years later, my memories of September 11 are like a slideshow:

Walking down Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and noticing the bluest of skies and the sun reflecting off the Chrysler Building; on the Brooklyn-bound 4, looking up from my newspaper when we didn’t stop at Fulton Street; pressing through an unusually large crowd trying to go down the subway steps at Borough Hall as I was trying to go up; joining colleagues standing outside our building as one, his face strained, said “It wasn’t a mistake — there were two planes”; looking out my office window across the river at the smoking towers when they suddenly gave way one at a time, the first seeming to collapse in tiers, the second almost disintegrating; lingering in a café until I could hear the subway running beneath me; making it as far as Rockefeller Center before service was suspended then walking the rest of the way home; finally getting phone service to let people know I was OK; the next day, laying on the grass in Central Park surrounded by others doing the same; for months, inhaling the electrical smell at Chambers Street when the subway doors opened; seeing In Search Of photos and notes posted everywhere, until they disappeared.

The accompanying soundtrack would capture shared grief and healing and unity ...