A New Yorker’s Recollection

A New Yorker’s Recollection

It has been 10 years for me since that day.

As I sit today watching the televised 10th Anniversary broadcast listening to the many children speaking words of love and prayers to the
parents they lost forever, I only want to grab my own children and hug and kiss them just a little bit too much today.

This is my story and the story of the gain of respect for many parents lost, and one child who live without his.

As the crisp September air breezed through my window, disturbing the tiny pigtails on my three-year-old daughter Shayna’s head, my
morning routine began as usual.

Aside from the needling behavior of my five-year-old son Nick, eager to meet his school buddies, it was just another ordinary day.  

I had just sent them off, each with bunches of mommy kisses, and had accepted a breakfast invitation from a friend to meet at the Golden
Dove Dinner just a few blocks from my home in Staten Island.

Relaxing over hot coffee and toasted English muffins smothered in butter, Joanne and I griped about married life and the motherhood of
toddlers. Within a New York minute – it all changed. Nothing was ordinary anymore.

We walked outside of the dinner into a massive crowd of screaming people and merchants abandoning their stores. They were begging
anyone in the streets for a working phone. As if in slow motion, we watched in confusion, until a stranger informed us of the 9/11 attacks in
Manhattan; only a 20 minute ferry boat ride over the bay from S.I.

My heart raced as I thought of my small children in our nearby school. Luckily, I quickly reached them and was allowed to sign them out
only minutes before New York declared, a mandatory school lock down across the five boroughs.

Safely now in my home, still with Joanne, we watched the devastation being televised and both frantically though of our husbands and our
other family members, wondering of their safety as well.

With a half working phone with only an intermediate dial tone, Joanne and I took turns making calls. Soon enough my husband was home
safe, but my mother-in-law, Marty, could not be reached – she was missing.

The hours crawled as we waited for news of her safety. Once home, she recounted for us her harrowing experience of the attacks:

When her bus reached the city that morning, she said it looked like a ticker-tape parade in the streets. The bus driver announced that a small
plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. And just like most other New Yorkers she paid little mind to her personal safety and had
thought it would be okay if she could just get to her office.

Known as the city that never sleeps, the usual stoic N.Y. streets were unfazed by the noise and confusion that littered the pavement. But this
day, it took only a short while for the tough Big Apple-skinned onlookers to realize: what was unraveling before them was not typical of any
sort.

When Marty eventually reached her office building, which sits directly across from the WTC, she found herself peering into a sky of flames.
Her own confusion heightened as the building guards initially forbade the employees to enter, but within minutes, then allowed them inside.

While at her desk and on the phone with her husband, the second plane hit the towers. Her building was now immediately evacuated.

Marty breathlessly ran for more than 20 blocks desperate to save her own life from the incredible disaster suddenly before her eyes. She was
then herded inside the S.I. ferry Boat Terminal – the only unrestricted form of N.Y. Mass Transit remaining.

She said while inside the terminal, she stood terrified by a window overlooking the bay and watched the Towers blazing on fire. She said
when the planes exploded bringing the Towers down, it sounded like a bomb had just hit the city. She and the people around her thought
they were being invaded. She said, everyone hit the ground, covered their heads, and huddled with each other for safety.  .