Author Archives: debintheuwharries

The Reader

27 Thursday Jun 2013

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“I was 10 years old. He was my cousin, 15 years old. It wasn’t pretty.”

We lay in bed, face down, shoulder to shoulder, he with his arms around his pillow, and I propped up on my elbows as I took in the full significance of this statement. Gary and I had met just days before, when I arrived in town after 36 hours on an Amtrak train from Denver to Oakland, the last leg over the Bay Bridge by bus into San Francisco. I’d heard about a budget hotel in the financial district.  Arriving on a Sunday afternoon, it was a veritable ghost town. I entered the small lobby, and was registered by a man behind the window of the hotel office. Pleasant and soft spoken, with light blue eyes, and his hair, a soft pale blond, was thinning heavily on the top, making him appear a bit older than he actually was. He took my driver’s license as identification. A smile came over his face as he said “we’re just a few months apart in age”. He asked me what brought me to San Francisco. “I am traveling around, seeing different parts of the country this summer,” I said. He was intrigued that a female would be traveling alone for an extended period of time, on public transportation, with no particular agenda. Gary offered to give me a tour of the city. It may seem odd, but I knew right away that it would be OK, that it would not be dangerous for me to spend time with him. It felt familiar around him, like I had been here before, and I was supposed to meet up with him right here in this place. I rode the elevator, with its steel gate that swung across the opening of the car, up to my floor. I suppose that some of what seemed a déjà vu experience stemmed from the sights and smells in that old building. I later learned that many old buildings in the West were built with materials that came by rail from the East. It was the steel and brick of my childhood in Brooklyn that I was feeling all around me. But at the time I simply had a powerful sense of place, of memory, of the rightness of being there.  

Gary finished his shift late that evening. I met him in the lobby, and we walked out and down the street towards Chinatown. San Francisco’s Chinatown is a sight to behold, especially for a newcomer. We walked and talked and stopped for an egg roll and soda, and I thought to myself “you are crazy, woman. You could get yourself killed, wandering around a strange city late at night with some guy who works the front desk of a budget hotel.” I was not and still am not one to take up quickly with another, man or woman, platonic or sexual. But felt an affinity with this man, and I decided that there were worse ways to die. If this was to be my last night on earth, well, I was spending it in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with a kind, handsome man who was on my path at that moment. I’m not sure if it was that night, or one of the nights to follow, that he told me that he’d been in jail for selling cocaine. “I wasn’t a very good drug dealer, obviously” he said. He did not run with drug dealers or users, he was simply broke and had nothing to fall back on at that point. He came out of jail, found the job at the hotel, and that’s where he ended up staying for a couple of years before moving on. He had the next day off, and we wandered the city together. He was a grand tour guide, having lived there for several years, and I was grateful and delighted. He knew that I had no money, and offered to let me stay in his room while I was there. What was interesting at this juncture was that nothing physical had taken place between us. He spontaneously bought me a flower while we were walking around that day, but nothing more. He went to work that evening, gave me the key to his room, and said I should just go up and check it out. His room was part of his pay, and he decorated it as only a 25 year old man could in 1989: a couple of busty nude photos on the wall, a pack of Marlboro and a small bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. The bathroom was the cleanest I’d ever seen, the colors of the bedding earthy and warm. He had stacks of cassette tapes and a stereo, and he had books. He had a lot of books. I decided to stay for a while. “What the hell” was actually what I said to myself. I couldn’t really afford to stay there on my hostelling budget, but I liked the place. I liked Gary. We shared that room for a week. I wandered on my own when he was working, and then we’d go around the city on his hours off. I watched him a lot: how he moved, what he said, what he didn’t say. Though we became lovers, that was a small part of the fact that even after all of these years, and not a lot of time together (we had that week, and a couple of months about a year later when I moved to San Francisco) he is very much a part of me. Every night that I was with him he would read before bed. In the morning if he had no place to go, he would read. If you’re a reader, you may think well so what, lots of people read! During our week together that summer, he confided in me that he had lived in a very unstable environment as a child, with his mother and various relatives. Books were his comfort, his escape. When he was in the sixth grade, he was raped by a 15 year old male cousin. When he realized that there was no help, no protection, available to him there, he ran away. He had only his skateboard, his denim jacket, and his sharp wits to sustain him. He regaled me with stories of wandering through the Grand Tetons, hitching rides, working odd jobs, doing whatever he had to do to survive. He never returned to school after the sixth grade, yet he was one of the most voracious readers I have ever met. With some gentle encouragement that yes, yes, he was smart enough to take the GED, he took the plunge and took the pretest (which showed only some minor math deficiencies), prepped and passed on the first try. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he got his certificate. He might as well have been receiving his doctorate, the moment was so powerful.

We drifted apart after awhile, not with any malice, simply because we seemed to have done what we needed to do together. I confided in him, too. I told him about an event in my life that I had rarely discussed, and which I am only now at nearly 50 years old ready to hash out all the way through as though my life depends on it, and in fact it may. I think that’s when I began to understand that not everyone is supposed to come into a life and stay there forever. I am not always totally at peace with it, but I believe it to be true. What I think I want or need and what IS may be very different things. It has taken a long time, but I’ve reached a place where I can acknowledge sadness that something is changing, or that someone is no longer in a prominent place in my life, and still know that this is how it ought to be. I speak of my life as a series of chapters. Some chapters are thick and spanning many years. Others are not nearly as extensive, but significant. Others still are a few pages long, and yet can still have tremendous potency, making a mark that lasts a lifetime. I wonder about Gary, if he’s still alive, if he has made peace with his demons. I hope he has found his balance, his center, and is soaring.

Crane Fly Phosphenes

11 Saturday May 2013

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I dreamed of

Crane fly phosphenes

In early morning

Lucid awakening, room darkened and still

A bright flash of light

Along its long legs and abdomen

Brought to mind a sparking of the spirit

I remember another dream of a month ago

The struggle between want and don’t played out

Your fists clenched against a bouquet bursting with color and scent and aphrodisiac

Yet you demand…demand! to be held close

An explosion of sound and heat

Pouring release into the air with no visible trace

Transformation

Traveling on the M57

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Cochlear Implant and Hearing, death and dying, recovery, Spirituality, Travel

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I was casually checking email the other night when I came upon one with the subject line “The Passing of Arthur”. Sent to a small group of Artie’s friends, his son sent an email to let us know that a few nights earlier, Artie had been riding a bus near home when he went into cardiac arrest. Efforts by doctors at the nearby hospital failed to revive him.

“Thank you for knowing and loving my father” he wrote at the end of his message, which brings on a fresh batch of tears every time I think about it.

Knowing and loving Artie, in the manner that I did for 11 years, was one of the grandest chapters of my life. It started out in an unorthodox manner, and for some, was and may remain verboten. I long ago quit caring about that, although it troubled me at the start, to the extent that it became a habit to reference him constantly and yet rarely mention him by name as the years went by.

Artie and I met one afternoon in his apartment in New York City. I was a case worker for an agency that served brain injury survivors. Artie was a brain injury survivor, a three-time stroke survivor. I remember running all over the city on that overcast day, and wishing I didn’t have that one last stop to make before heading home for the evening. He lived a long walk from the subway, and as I never liked waiting on the cross-town bus, I hustled towards Tenth Avenue. I got to the building, climbed the front steps and rang the doorbell. Being severely hard of hearing, I never knew for sure when the tenant was buzzing me through the locked doors. I felt the door frame for the vibration and after a couple of false starts; I got into the lobby and made my way up the stairs. In the doorway of 2B I saw a man who looked older than the stated age on the paperwork, just shy of his 57th birthday. About 5’7”, pale skin, light strawberry blonde hair, and large, shining blue eyes. He was neither unfriendly nor especially welcoming as he allowed me into his apartment. The living room was rather dark, the blinds drawn. Up on a wooden platform was a cat. Sparkle was completely white with blue eyes, and entirely deaf, but otherwise able-bodied and very intelligent.

I began my intake process in the usual fashion, to determine the need for services and supports. I was intrigued with some of the artwork he had up on the walls and asked about them. Pictures of people and scenes of far off places, and one was a photograph of a woman lying on her side, her breasts exposed. It was a very intimate and sensuous image. I learned that he had taken that picture–an old girlfriend of his—along with most of the others on the walls. There was a story to go with every one of them, and I was fascinated in part because I am a wanderer, a traveler, and I enjoy hearing about the adventures of others. He had traveled wide and long, and often said that if he could have he would have just traveled on and on. Ultimately, the intake took about a half an hour, for he was not interested in accessing an intensive level of supports, though he eventually acknowledged the need for some daily help. The rest of the visit went on for a couple more hours, as we talked about all sorts of topics: art, spirituality, psychology, history, music. There were many interests that we shared, but that is not so unusual on its own. The feeling that was there made no sense to me and yet I was compelled to touch it; the awareness of interconnectedness with my friend, this man I had just met that afternoon. We recognized it intuitively then, and learned to articulate it later, there was a meeting of soul mates that day. I did not know it right away, but I learned that though he had many friends, he rarely had guests into his home, and yet he continued to welcome me. I felt deeply honored by that alone.

I struggled with the fact of my role in his life. Although I wasn’t providing therapeutic or clinical services to him, there was and is an ingrained message I carry with me about the people I serve in my work through the years: that regardless of anything else, there is an inherent imbalance of power when one is the provider of a service, the other is a recipient. There have been many instances in which I have gone above and beyond to provide supports to individuals I serve. I am aware that altruism always carries a measure of selfishness, and I see no dichotomy in that. Anyone who says such acts are entirely selfless is deceiving themselves. I played this role in his life for about a year and a half. I moved away, and we continued to email regularly and exchange cards at various holidays. He is one of the few people I continued to get birthday cards from via snail mail. He was the most Jewish Gentile I have ever met, a product of growing up along the J train line in Brooklyn, combined with an intense curiosity about everything. The first time I heard him use the word shul (Yiddish for synagogue) I almost fell out of my chair laughing. He understood the culture so well; he could send the most hilariously nuanced holiday cards of anyone I knew.

I could write pages and pages of stories about him and our friendship, the long walks in Central Park, wandering around the medieval architecture of the Cloisters. Meals in Indian restaurants around the city, hangouts in a place that served us coffee while we sat surrounded by greenery. He knew so much about the city of his birth, his life, and though he loved to explore the far corners of India and Africa, he always came home. He loved his children and grandchildren, and no little drama like the Great Blackout of 2003 was going to prevent him from getting from Manhattan to Newark to Colorado, where his son and daughter-in-law had brought their first child into the world. I still don’t know how he managed that, for most fully able-bodied individuals could barely figure out how to survive those difficult days, but he just pushed past all kinds of limitations and did what he wanted to do.

It wasn’t all of those marvelous aspects of our friendship that made him so exceptional to me, why I made sure that no matter what, I fit in a visit with him every time I came back to the city after moving away in 2004. It was love. I loved Artie. I loved him because he had that rare quality of being able to see what is essential, and was generous enough to share what he knew. I loved what I saw in his eyes, how he showed his warmth, his worries, his humor, his ironic view of life. And I loved that he cared for me, and how he was not afraid to show it. He taught me to be a little less afraid of the intensity of my own feelings about many things.  I’m going to miss his stories, his teachings, and his poetic messages about life.

I’m really not sure how long it’s going to take to get used to him not being around anymore.

After the initial shock of the news of Artie’s death passed, I actually smiled when I thought about how utterly fitting it was that the last thing he did in this life was ride the bus. He was traveling—from a meeting, most likely, a core feature of the past 37 years of his life, or perhaps from a meditation evening–and doing his thing. Peace, my old hippie friend. Shalom Aleichem.

Letting Go

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in death and dying, Spirituality

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My father died last Monday. In a couple of hours, it will have been one week since he took his last breath, having done battle against a metastasized melanoma since October. The doctor at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, a hospice facility, called the time: 2:30 AM. “He’s looking at you” she said. It was a sweet thing to say, though even at that moment I thought that it was rather quaint to suggest he might’ve been looking at me as he died. He WAS faced in the direction that I was sitting most of the evening, on his right side, first in a chair right next to his bed, and then at the end, half sleeping, half dreaming, in a recliner chair a little bit further away, still on his right side. Still, I presume that it is merely a reflex that turned his head from one side to the other.

Not a week earlier, Dad and his wife met with the oncologist at NYU and got the bad news: the immunotherapy treatments that he had gotten monthly between October and January had not impacted the course of the disease. For a couple of weeks prior to this, he’d been experiencing increasing pain and other symptoms, but continued to hold out hope that these were byproducts of the treatments, side effects that would ease with time. In fact, it was the progression of the disease that was causing such difficulty. Up until that point, my father continued to do virtually everything that he did before getting the diagnosis. He undoubtedly tolerated a great deal of pain before he finally acknowledged it out loud. “I have a very high tolerance for pain. You know that if I’m telling you it has me laid up in bed, it’s getting bad.” There was no doubt in my mind that if my father was lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon, something was terribly wrong. Still, we all held out hope that the PET scan would reveal that the tumors had shrunken, and that dad had been given some extra time.

From the moment he was told that the treatment had not helped, and that there were truly no other options besides those that would bring him physical comfort, he began the last phases of dying. Just that same week he was driving with his wife down to the city for his appointments, making phone calls to deal with various business matters. “I’ll drive us” he told his wife, she offering to do so but seeing no need to intervene, as he was still capable. But after the news was digested, he began to not only be given care for his pain, he began his rapid decline. Within two days of hospice support at home, his needs became so great that he was moved to Calvary Hospice House, where he received excellent care. The call from my brother came on Saturday evening: his mom told him that we need to get on a plane and get up there right away. And so we did, he arriving from Colorado on a redeye flight, I making my way up to the Bronx from North Carolina on Sunday morning. Dad had previously expressed the desire to keep visitors limited to his most inner circle. His wife, three of his four children who could be present, his brother, and two of his former NYPD colleagues, one of whom he maintained a strong 42 year friendship, long past and beyond the scope of the job.

I have had some personal experience with hospice and the dying process, and so it was not a surprise to me that once he saw the last person he needed to see, he was almost finished with his process. I also know that there are as many ways of leaving as there are individuals. I was so preoccupied with being present, in the moment, with my dad, that he surprised me at the end.

I had indicated to his wife that I wished to spend the night at hospice with dad. I knew that his youngest son had stayed there with him the previous night. I was concerned that perhaps his son would want to stay with him again and would prefer that I not be there. I needn’t have worried, for his son was exhausted and welcomed the support. I was relieved, because I really needed to be there. I knew this was as much for me as it was for my dad. At about 10 PM, I sat in the recliner chair and promptly fell asleep. Having had about 2 hours sleep the night before, I was exhausted. At 11:30 I awoke, and alternated between sitting and holding my dad’s hand, pacing the room, and drinking the little juice cups the nurse had given me for the evening. Earlier in the day when dad was still somewhat aware of his surroundings, I acted on a suggestion made by a friend, and took a picture of my hand on his with my camera phone. Now as I sat watching and listening to him breathe, I took one of just my own arm, palm up and open. Finally, at about a quarter to two, I decided I should try to get a little rest. I held his hand once more, and kissed it, and stroked his hair. I climbed back into the recliner chair, a little further away from the bed. I fell into a fitful state for about half an hour, dozing and then glancing over at dad, whose breathing was full of crackly sounds. He looked very relaxed, no signs of distress, so I did not worry. I fell into a deeper sleep, and I began to dream that I was in a struggle with someone or something that had a grip on my wrists, on my hands. I did not feel that I was in danger, only that there was a struggle ensuing. I was in that half dream state, you know when you know you’re dreaming but you can’t get yourself out of it? I remember thinking that someone would come and help me. As I fought off the force that had a grip on me, I started to scream. I thought I was screaming so loudly that it was coming out and into the room and that someone would hear me and come to my assistance. I screamed long and loud and yelled let go! Just let go! As I shook myself awake, the door to the room opened, the light was turned on, and a nurse and aides walked into the room. One of them came to me and softly said: we need to call the doctor. He has stopped breathing. I jumped up, fumbling around for my eyeglasses, and said oh my god I just dreamed there was a struggle and I couldn’t get free of it! I looked at my dad, his eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar, but his face looked so peaceful. He had stayed on all the while I was holding his hand. As soon as I moved away, and fell into sleep, he let go. I doubt he was waiting in the sense we usually mean, but there was a sense of closure, like he was just going to hang around until I could let go. And then he let go, too.

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Haunted Dreams

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Spirituality, Uncategorized

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Trust your dreams, trust your heart, and trust your story.—Neil Gaiman

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this quote on my Facebook page. A friend commented that he liked the quote, but was helping perform exorcisms in his dreams when he woke up that morning, with the implication that he wasn’t altogether sure about trusting in this instance. He shared that he’d fallen asleep watching “The Exorcist”, and presumably carried that with him into his dream life. An aficionado of horror movies, it is not surprising that such images and concepts would infiltrate his sleep. It got me thinking, though: about exorcism, about its roots in a belief of demonic possession and spirits, and the myriad reasons we are drawn to the idea that one might be able to be freed from possession, from that which is negative, harmful, and painful physically and/or spiritually.

Popular culture presents movies in which no exorcism is complete without a full range of cinematic terrors. I confess to a love-hate relationship with such films. This might surprise those with whom I’ve shared that as a rule I do not watch horror flicks, and I never watch them before bedtime unless I have no plans to sleep well that night. The truth is that I am fascinated by the idea that through ritualized action, one might be released from personal terrors. What happens for me in watching such films is that it’s as if every mental pore is opened, the spiritual eye dilated, and I am so overwhelmed by the stimulation that it’s very difficult to wind down afterward.

As a religious practice, exorcism has lost much of its shine as a variety of conditions once seen as the result of possession by the devil—drug abuse and alcoholism, abnormal behavior, illness—became better understood in some instances and more tolerated in others. Having sophisticated explanations for why people do what they do does not necessarily eliminate the need, the urge, to purge oneself of thoughts and behavior that are seemingly detrimental.

After that brief discussion, I found myself thinking about the connections between the intention of the exorcism rites and the deep desire I have experienced to be purged of certain emotional states and thought processes which cut their teeth on painful life experiences. My desire has always been to have an unfettered sense of joy at being alive. I don’t want to hear that it’s a lot to ask! I’ve thought more than once that a good bloodletting might do wonders. It seemed to make a great deal of sense that if something is blocked, something full of pus and carrying disease, then why mightn’t it be a good thing to create an opening, a release? Then again, my thoughts traveled to some of the most remarkable people I have met along the path I have traveled. They carry deep psychic scars that are bandaged up, the protocol for care often a hot-iron burn to cool the flames of the pain lurking underneath the smile, the despondent alcoholic who didn’t even know what pit of hell they were tripping over their own feet into when they picked up the bottle just to bring a little lightness into their life. Some of these friends have had experiences that trump the best the horror flicks can throw at us from the screen.

I discarded the notion of bloodletting a long time ago, and yet the desire to purge remains. It doesn’t seem farfetched to consider expansion of the concept of exorcism from the vantage point of health and strength in body, mind, and spirit. Rituals of cleansing and healing can take many forms. Soaking in a hot springs pool. Paddling along a lake or river. Walking a wooded path. Meditating deeply. Sitting in a 12-step meeting. Talking with a trusted friend about a long hidden wound or scar. Holding a lover close and practicing the art of knowing another deeply. Crying. Being a help to others.

What are you haunted by? What rituals do you engage in so that you might hold the “devil” back? I dream of a life in which nothing is kept at bay, but set to sail depending on need and circumstance. Take a good look at your haunts, and begin to practice those small exorcisms. What shape do they take, what is their heft, their color? One thing I’m sure of is that burying mine in layers of denial simply made them yell louder. I carry within me, along with life’s heaviest burdens, a hopefulness that such practice can lead to that unfettered joy that we each came into the world with, is ours to experience, and which lies just beneath the layers of pain and sorrow.

Green Bananas

15 Saturday Dec 2012

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I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live. –Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Earlier this week, I was in a car accident. I was quite shook up by the experience; however, it was my car, not me, that sustained significant bodily damage. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the other driver would accept full responsibility for the accident.

As I sat staring across the road at the Thai restaurant I had been heading to for lunch, hanging on the phone for an interminable length of time to speak with one or another agent I needed to complete my accident claim, I was building up a nice dose of self-pity. Had I not had enough trials? Crap! Now my car is wrecked, I might find myself physically struggling from effects of the force of the blow to the car, which was powerful enough to deploy the passenger side airbag. No few thoughts about all the traumatic brain injury survivors I have worked with over years came to mind. I love to talk about how I understand that things can change in the blink of an eye. Be grateful for each moment. At that moment, though, I was just shook up and pissed off.

After a while, the tow truck arrived. Out stepped a rather cheerful man, probably in his early 60’s. He chattered away as he processed the tow, and though I tried to be engaging, I don’t think I hear as well under stress as I do under normal conditions. So I smiled. He kept talking and eventually, as I climbed into the cab and we drove off, I began to tune in. Talking about work, and traveling, he turned to stories of how he loves to wake up in the morning and say things like “honey, I am in the mood for some Kansas City barbeque”, and the next thing they know, they’re on a road trip. He talked about a television commercial (which I have not seen) having to do with a paint varnish and Niagara Falls. Or something like that. He told his wife, “they are lying; they cannot stop that river from flowing to do what they say they can do”. Or something like that. J  He went on to tell her that he would prove it to her, and besides, he has wanted to visit that part of the country. “You want to drive all the way up there to show me that?” she reportedly replied, which at that point seemed funny to me as I am now aware that they have been together since she was 14 and has likely made quite a few of these road trips by now.

I love to travel. I have traveled quite a bit but there is a very long bucket list awaiting me. I travel light, and have no problem packing a bag and hitting the road with little preparation. So by the time we got to the repair shop, I did not want to get out of the truck. I was thoroughly taken by this charming man telling me stories of adventure and love and a partnership with his wife of 45 years.  As it became apparent that it was time to move on, he became very serious, and he said this: I don’t believe in waiting on things. I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow. I don’t even buy green bananas. I don’t know if I’ll be around to eat them.

This morning I woke to the memory that on Friday a man walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and massacred 26 children and adults before committing suicide. At this writing, no one knows why he did this, and a whole county is in mourning over the fact of and complexities surrounding the event.

I am filled with grief at the needless loss of life. I am chomping at the bit to see this latest tragedy having some meaning in the form of real movement toward addressing the issues of mental illness and gun control in this country.

I have also decided that from this moment on I will only buy yellow bananas.

September 11th Reflections

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

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east river drive traffic
Thinking about September 11, 2001
by Deborah Marcus on Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 7:59pm ·

I don’t think that I have ever written anything in any venue about September 11th.  Sometimes it is hard to believe that it has been 9 years since that morning when things shifted in our corner of the universe. I have many and conflicting thoughts about the days events: what led up to it, who and what played roles in the culmination that was 9/11. Mostly I think about the feelings and experiences of those around me, as I observed them. Those observations were largely visual, for at that time I was not yet a cochlear implant recipient. I wore no hearing aids, and depended to the largest extent on lipreading and other visual clues, with my remaining hearing filling in only the smallest gaps in my experiential world. And so, it was with muffled sounds around me I stepped off of the subway car at Penn Station just after 9 o’clock that morning. I saw a number of individuals standing on the platform straining to hear an announcement. I could hear some of the sound but none of what was being said. I thought ooh there must be some kind of transportation glitch, glad I’m where I need to be already. Someone asked me if I could hear the announcement, which I found amusing, but also had the effect of pulling me in and now I too wanted to know what all the excitement was about. Soon I realized that people were saying “a plane hit one of the towers”…”there may be a second plane”…”no, just a rumor, but there was an accident, a plane hit the trade center” and so on. I was so confused, in that way I would often get when I understood what was said but thought surely I must have misunderstood? I ran up the stairs to the street. At the northeast corner of 8th Ave and 34th street I looked all around me and saw people standing around talking on cell phones.Trying to use their cell phones, anyway, from what I could tell. I had no cell phone, could not hear on any of them. A long line grew at the single functional payphone on that corner. More snippets of dialogue filtered in to my brain and I thought what the hell? and rushed on to the office. I went straight to Angela, my supervisor, who shared what she knew, and wonderful person she is, made sure I was kept up on the news reports that I could not hear. The rest of the day was a blur of emotions. I was pulled in several directions. I was concerned that my TBI clients were ok. That Don was ok. Wondering if my Dad decided to go downtown this morning (he had not gone that day but went to the financial district and the towers often enough for me to worry.) The screams of a co-worker who feared that her sister was up in one of the doomed towers (she was not up there that morning, thank God.) Letting friends near and far know that I was ok. Wondering how, or if, we’d go home that evening. Thinking about how close our office building was to the Empire State building, and with the news of the Pentagon and Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, I don’t think it was excessively paranoid of us to start to envision jet planes ripping through Macy’s and landing in the lobby of our building. Knowing that those buildings were down, the fate of so many desperately uncertain. After a long stretch of frantic calls to clients and their home care staff to ensure that all were safe and coping (reasonably) well with the situation, I stepped out for a breath of air and walked towards 8th Avenue. There was a strange pulse in the air, a vibration. Everyone seemed dazed, and as I walked past a homeless woman I could see that she was repeatedly saying “it’s over…it’s the end…” and I found myself thinking that on any other day I’d be thinking sad thoughts for that woman, how disturbed and delusional she was, but today I wondered if she didn’t have it exactly right.

I will not speak to the details of the attack that crashed over us in the days and weeks to follow. I will also not, in this note, say more than a most heartfelt God Bless to those who lost their lives, or lost loved ones, at the Towers. What I want to share is a little snapshot of the face of New York City in the days following the event. My then husband and I commuted by subway to our jobs in the City from Brooklyn. For at least a couple of weeks, as we rode the F train over the elevated stations toward Manhattan early in the morning, the dark drift of smoke and dust and debris that lingered over and drifted away from the Towers was in plain view. When we were able to bury ourselves  in a book or magazine (looking at the newspaper guaranteed endless images and commentary on the attacks) we would pause in our reading and glance out the window and be thrown right back into that maelstrom of emotion tied directly with the knowledge that the kind of illusory sense of impermeability we once had was gone forever. New Yorkers are a hardy bunch. Events that would make front page news in my new small town in North Carolina are barely noticed in the five boroughs. There are those who misunderstand the New Yorker and see them, from the outsider’s vantage point, as rude, pushy, loud, callous. We (and I include myself here for I will always be a New Yorker) are all of that from time to time but there is a heart of gold there, too. It is mountainous and accessible if you know the way. It was most apparent as I saw people comfort those openly weeping on trains and buses, city streets and offices. I saw it in my neighbors and friends taking a gentler step through the day and extending a longer than usual helping arm to one another in those weeks following that terrible morning. I saw it, too, in efforts to heal through artist expression. My friend Sarah came to me one day and suggested that we might create with our hands objects that are expressive of how we are feeling and dealing with the grief. I decided to go along with this although I really couldn’t see what its value might be to me. We got plain hinged wood boxes and came to the table with various materials and each of us made something that was unique, personal, and in fact amazingly healing. We talked about it a bit after the projects were completed. For me, just having this box that I could open and remember what each little item meant to me was priceless. I have no doubt that similar projects were undertaken all over town, most of which we never heard about because they were meant as objects for personal healing, nothing more.

Each of us undoubtedly have a defining moment around 9/11. For me, it is a single piece of paper found by Don a few days after the attack, on our terrace in Brooklyn. Having stepped outside for a moment, he rushed in saying that I must come outside immediately. Opening the door to the terrace, I peered out and saw a sheet of white 8.5 x 11in paper. What could be the big deal? I thought. Picking it up, I noticed that the edges appeared burnt. Looking closer, I felt a deep chill as I realized that it was a fax from a  company in one of the smaller towers that was later demolished. I cannot tell you the details at this moment because we decided that Don would keep the item. Coincidentally–or maybe not?–I noted that it had been faxed on my birthday the year before. Soon, people would find similar bits of paper around the city, for they drifted with the breezes for miles. I felt like I had been slammed in the head at that moment: any shred of a sense of this all being some kind of  big misunderstanding was gone. These remnants, evidence of what had occurred just days before, were spreading all over the city, demanding to be heard. The challenge was, and remains, in the translation.

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