Five years ago, I stood at an office window and watched the towers burn. It didn't seem real at the time. For me, the view from this window was the highlight of my day. Every afternoon, I would grab a cup of coffee and watch the sun turn the towers a brilliant gold. To me they were a thing of beauty.
I had been to the "Top of the World" once. My husband and I took our son and his friend. The kids had so much fun. We stopped to have our pictures taken with a backdrop of the towers, before getting on the elevators to the top.
We walked around the top floor, enjoying the view. There was a store where you could purchase the photos that were taken on the ground floor. It was staffed with a number of charming young women. Their smiles were contagious.
We had fun typing comments into a computer that would send our remarks out into space. Eventually, we realized that you could take an escalator to the top. We were amazed at how open the top of the building was. The guard rail was only waist high and you could see for miles. My husband didn't care for heights and he had to sit down for a few minutes. One poor woman held on to the inner guard rail and dragged herself around to the other side where the down escalator was.
The boys and I were thrilled. I still have the picture of them leaning up against the guard rail smiling.
It is harder for me to watch the television coverage now than it did then. We know so much more now than we did that day. We know the number of people who died. We know the number of emergency personnel who died in the line of duty. We know the monsters that did this.
I went back to that window, just once. The city resembled a child's smile that was missing teeth. You didn't just see the void; you felt it. I never went back, again. When I think of the towers, I remember the smiling young women who sold me the pictures . I wonder if when I was staring at the towers, drinking my coffee, if someone in the towers was doing the same, staring back across the water at me. And I wonder if any of them made it out alive that day.
People have complained that the media blitzed us with 9/11 rememberances. I think they did an amazing job. We can't be allowed to become complacent and forget. For in not learning from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
