anniver­sary eve

It is a bit of a mile­stone this year, maybe a nat­ur­al one. Every year since the ter­ri­ble events on our doorstep, eight years ago, we have observed the day in some way. Of course, ear­ly on it was an unavoid­able, all-too present anniver­sary, marked by mas­sive city-wide events, at first (I remem­ber that first anniver­sary was spent at my baby art gallery, with neigh­bors drop­ping by to light can­dles, what a com­mu­ni­ty that was). There were sev­er­al years of the “Tow­ers of Light” that we in the neigh­bor­hood loved so much: blue visions shoot­ing into the sky even high­er than those top doomed floors had reached…

Then we moved away, from the expe­ri­ences, from the mem­o­ries. And the fifth anniver­sary hap­pened here, and how hard I found it. John was away on busi­ness, and how guilty he felt, not to be with me on the day. I went to the Grosvenor Square memo­r­i­al and could not stop cry­ing. As well, the fol­low­ing year. Then last year, we observed the day so far as to have a din­ner with the friends we’d spent a din­ner with right after the day… and we remarked the next day that we had not even talked about the events. And this year? Tomor­row will be the Lost Prop­er­ty Lun­cheon, 30 ladies here at my house to feed, food to pre­pare, nap­kins and plates and forks and cham­pagne glass­es to gath­er, busi­ness to report. And then ten­nis, and a drinks par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the start of the school year, at my friend Annie’s house. Some­thing has passed, the need reflex­ive­ly to observe a day. Is that a good thing?

I have read that there’s a move­ment afoot in the States to make the day a per­ma­nent… not to say “hol­i­day,” as a day to mark. Stores and schools and post office to remain closed. I don’t know how I feel about that. We always knew that we were at the clos­est cir­cle to the events that you could be, with­out los­ing some­one. So we can­not real­ly say we under­stand those who want to remem­ber it for­ev­er. Yes­ter­day I told Avery that I was think­ing of it less and less as the years go by, and she said, shock­ing­ly, “I think of it more and more as I get old­er.” “Why on earth?” I asked, and she said, “I was so lit­tle when it hap­pened that I did­n’t under­stand, and you nev­er let the news be on, for years after­ward, when I was lit­tle… now I hear peo­ple talk­ing about it, and we dis­cussed the rela­tion­ship between reli­gion and ter­ror­ism in RS [reli­gious stud­ies], and I thought a lot about what had hap­pened.” Of course she would: she was embroiled, at age near­ly 5, in one of the most sig­nif­i­cant moments in our coun­try’s his­to­ry, and we did, I admit, try our hard­est to keep her shel­tered from it. It was just instinct.

At any rate, today found me out and about with my friend Gigi, always a ton­ic (two com­plete­ly unused PhDs in one room can be only a good thing, I feel), at the Saatchi Gal­leries look­ing at tru­ly dread­ful art. More on that soon, since I must quote from the cat­a­logue, noth­ing less than a lit­er­al trans­la­tion will do. But suf­fice to say at this moment that the beet­root-infused salmon sal­ad at the gallery’s Mess is not to be despised, was in fact LOVE­LY. And to be with a tru­ly intel­li­gent friend (who has, it must be admit­ted, worked as a copy writer for JCrew and as such can come up with any num­ber of clever words for ANY col­or she sees) was the best med­i­cine for the anniver­sary eve, when one hard­ly knows how to feel. Thank you, Gigi.