Seventeen years today…
I chose to remember joy, even though my heart aches for the losses.
For the hole in the sky.
For the people I mourn.
For an America that was less fractured by revenge, less intent on unraveling progress, less mean in its pursuit of something tangible that has seemingly been lost.
I prefer to remember joy and wonder …
I work downtown again.
The first time since the summer of 2001.
My office was at the Woolworth Building then and the Towers were my backyard. A place I’d run to to catch the subway, dart into a Children’s Place to pick up little things for my daughter, or to peruse the aisles at Borders Bookstore.
Early that summer, I took my team to lunch at Windows on the World at the top of the North Tower (Building One).
It was a languid lunch, with one of our number who’d moved on coming in to meet with us. We sat by a window looking east towards Brooklyn, marveling at the view, the company, and the chance to take a break during the day.
I think of this because when I walk along Fulton Street heading to or from my new office on Gold Street, I am always surprised by the absence of the Twin Towers.
Perhaps I’ll get used to it one day and even catch site of it without a sharp intake of breath as a measurement of the loss I still feel.
But even if each and every sight of it for the rest of my life causes a momentary pause, I’ll also always remember the joy and wonder of Phillipe Petit walking between the Towers on his tight rope.
That and my lunch with the Imagine crew sustains me when I otherwise expect to see the view that never ceased to captivate me–nor burn an ember in my heart by its absence.
Girlboxing 