NYC- Week Three Hundred and Twelve (approx.)

Well I can't sleep. I figured if maybe I just let my fingers speak for me, maybe I could get a little shut eye.

It's that time of year again.

I actually had such a great day today (Monday the 10th) that I actually forgot for a few hours. You will get to read all of that next week. It really was a fun day.

It sucks not being in New York for 9/11. There is a tree on 7th Avenue in Brooklyn, which was on my walk to the subway, that has been a memorial tree of sorts. This old woman made a shine out of it, looked over it, and (as of last year) put candles out. I always left some flowers at that tree to mark the day. Two years ago, she was actually out there when I left them, and we talked a little.
Usually I listen to the Reading of The Names. I thought that I would miss it this year, seeing as I am 2 hours behind New York, but is seems this temporary insomnia will take care of that. It's only a little over an hour before it all starts.

Flashes of images from the day come so quickly I can barely catch any. I am not even going to go into the images we all know. Jim waking me up to look out my bedroom window before it was even on the news. Getting online immediately because I knew if I didn't right then, I wouldn't. My email getting packed full of Are You OK? messages. Jim and I filling up the tub with water because that's what you do in an emergency ... that one makes me laugh a little. The plume of smoke going right over my apartment buiding, pitch black against a perfectly blue sky. Kricka and I walking around the neighborhood just to extract ourselves from sitting in front of the TV. Our neighborhood was so busy. You would have thought it was a holiday, except for the glassy eyed looks. One of my best friends calling me from midtown, hysterical, telling me to call his mom for him to let her know he was ok because his cell would only work for NYC calls, not realizing until a day later that he had been caught inside an elevator and got out just as the tower fell. That same friend recounting his story on my couch, a day later, having to stop and sob, his fear and pain palpable and feeling so weak and inadequate that I could do nothing to help him. The F-16s zooming overhead, simultaneously instilling deep fear and comfort in my soul. I could go on, as most of us could, I think.

Remember when you were so excited that it was Memorial Day? It meant the amusement parks were open during the week and you had the day off from school. I never really thought about what the day was really about.
There is a part of me that is ashamed of being so ignorant. Then again, that is the beauty of youth. There is truth to the old adage "Ignorance is Bliss". I remember when I would look at a plane flying over my head and I would wonder where those people were going. I never think that anymore.

A friend of mine was going through a very difficult time a few years ago and I said to them that we are the sum of all that happens to us - the Good and the Bad. Even the Bad that happens helps to create the person we are ultimately going to be and that it was ok to change. To expect yourself to be the same person you were before is futile. The people who truly love you, will allow you to change and love you anyway. I think I am finally starting to take my own advice. Took long enough.

So I am sad. Big deal. I am alive and everyone I love is alive. I think I am going to allow myself to listen to the Reading of The Names for an hour. Then I am going to go to sleep. Then I am going to wake up, read my emails from Kricka (which greet me every morning), and go walk around town and enjoy my afternoon off. I think doing something fun and interesting is probably the best way to pay tribute to the people who died.

Maybe that's why it isn't so bad to go on a picnic on Memorial Day