2001-09-12 - 11:00 a.m.
I want to thank you all for your emails, your guestbook entries, your love and support. I want to thank you.
My email box yesterday filled with stories. Emails. From friends checking in. Relatives checking in. Strangers checking in. The chronology of my email box. Late last night I received final confirmation from all of my close friends that they are alive. This morning the Girl received an email from her close friend who has an apartment downtown. He is alive.
I feel helpless from a distance. Should have been me. Would have been me. I saw a photo of a keyboard lying in the rubble. Could have been mine. Would have been mine. I can't allow myself to do "what ifs?" I cannot think that.
The reality is that you did move. My coworker said this morning. What if's are irrelevant because that is not reality. Reality is that you did move.
I love New York. I love New Yorkers. I woke up this morning wanting to send flowers. To who? Friends. Loved ones. I realized I wanted to send flowers to the city. That city. That city.
I woke up this morning after a dream that I had gone to the Burger King on Liberty Street. Like I always did. Read the Post at my table upstairs. Stared across the street at people walking to work. I dreamed I walked across the street and there was twisted rubble.
There were flags flying on people's car antennas this morning. I am going to do the same. With the little flag I had sitting on my desk. In my cubicle. In the World Trade Center.
We are more than this. We will not be terrorized. We will mourn. And cry.
I am having a very difficult time. Not hating. I am having a very difficult time not wanting to see any country having anything to do with this... bombed into whatever sea or ocean is nearby. I find it difficult to not hate.
***
They are leaving flowers for our loved ones at US embassies around the world. My mothers' office has erected a shrine. This was her email:
I found a picture of the trade center that I took on the ride on the ferry from the Statue of Liberty when we were there on Memorial Day when you first moved there and a photo of Katie and I at the base of the Statue of Liberty that you took and the Trade Center was in the background. Betty brought a little flag to work and the photos are under it. I think I will add a copy of your email to our "shrine".
Love you, Mom
***
Continue to pray.
