Recov­ery

What did we learn from Sep­tem­ber 11?

I learned that noth­ing, whether it is bad or good, lasts for­ev­er.  After the events of the day, that tru­ism seemed to apply only to good things: sky­scrap­ers, hap­py kinder­garten, safe­ty, security.

But as the months went by, I learned that the bad bits do not last for­ev­er, either.  As a love­ly Scot­tish writer put it, “Grief is a won­der­ful thing in a way, because after a bit you can put it down, by the side of the road, and walk on.”  I learned to do that, but it was slow-going and with many steps back­ward along the way.  I learned that in many ways, I was made of The Wrong Stuff.  I could not be far­ther from the per­son­al­i­ty of a hero who runs into a burn­ing build­ing or a may­or who goes to 343 fire­men’s funer­als, or Abby the Kinder­garten Teacher who spent sev­en hours a day with 45 five-year-olds and was still smil­ing at 3 p.m.  I just was not made of The Right Stuff.

I empathized with the edi­to­r­i­al writer of the New York Times who mused whether she would rather die smoth­ered in a tun­nel or falling from a bridge.  I wor­ried a great deal about vehi­cles parked in my street with no imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fi­able own­er.  The whole “if you see some­thing, say some­thing” mot­to of New York City found a will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor in me, and my local precinct of New York’s Bravest got hearti­ly sick of my phone calls.  I’m sure I was on a “loony neigh­bor” list with the box next to my name firm­ly ticked.  In ink.

I took a lot of fit­ful naps and became obses­sive­ly famil­iar with the topog­ra­phy of Afghanistan.  I was irri­ta­ble and snap­pish.  I was not inspi­ra­tional or uplift­ing or even one iota optimistic.

But the thing was, life was relent­less.  Cop­ing with Avery’s needs got me up in the morn­ing and kept me going dur­ing the day.  It was impos­si­ble not to get excit­ed when the class­room chicks hatched, and even though there was­n’t a place to sit down, the kinder­garten room was a mag­net for many of us par­ents.  Abby’s unfail­ing, gen­tle smile was always filled with love and patience, for all of us.  We par­ents often felt as much under her wing as the chil­dren did.

And then, in Feb­ru­ary, it hap­pened.  Our beloved PS 234 was giv­en back to us.

The Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Admin­is­tra­tion had occu­pied the school since the evening of Sep­tem­ber 11.  On the school’s web­site there was a cal­en­dar with a smi­ley face stuck to every day the school had been open that year.  It stopped at Sep­tem­ber 10.  Who knows what state the school build­ing was in when the last of those offi­cial boots walked out the door.  We kinder­garten par­ents were not includ­ed in what must have been a mas­sive parental effort to make the school wel­com­ing again.

What I do remem­ber is the open week­end before the offi­cial reopen­ing on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 4.  With char­ac­ter­is­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty, the school’s admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply opened the doors, all week­end, and let us all re-acquaint our­selves with the school in our own time, in our own ways.  All Avery want­ed to do was run around “the yard,” the seem­ing­ly unap­peal­ing, sim­ple con­crete open area which had been the scene of such pan­ic and chaos months before.  In the months and years ahead, “the yard” would be the scene instead of hours of chalk-draw­ing, whis­pered con­fi­dences, kick­ball and even a lit­tle child­hood romance…  Around and around she ran, exor­cis­ing ghosts.

There were huge trucks parked out­side the front door of the school, loaded with fresh school sup­plies, juice box­es, prob­a­bly even a ham­ster or two.  It was very, very excit­ing, and also heart­break­ing in a way.  Start­ing over is always a chal­lenge, and we had start­ed over so many times that year.

We went inside and for some rea­son were the only peo­ple there.  The soli­tude and silence were just what we need­ed to absorb the mem­o­ries of the past, to rec­on­cile the hope and inno­cence of Sep­tem­ber 10 with the expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, the adjust­ments, tears, loss­es and gains of the inter­ven­ing five months.  The qui­et hall­ways were lined, poet­i­cal­ly, touch­ing­ly, with the dozens of Amer­i­can flags made of every mate­r­i­al you can imag­ine, from coun­tries all over the world, sent to us to cheer us up on arrival.  “Wel­come home!” they said in many lan­guages.  “You’ve got your school back!  Hip hip  hooray!”

Avery stood gaz­ing up at one of the dozens of quilts that had been sent to us, read­ing the heart­felt, empa­thet­ic mes­sages from chil­dren we would nev­er meet.  “I know it’s been hard for you, but it will get bet­ter.”  “The whole world is think­ing of you.”  “We had a hur­ri­cane in our town once and three peo­ple died, so I know how you feel.”

It was stun­ning and hum­bling to think of all the effort, all over the world, that strangers had made to cre­ate gifts for our chil­dren (and for us), to hang in our school.  I thought of all the school­teach­ers who felt help­less, imag­in­ing what they would do if their school were tak­en from them, and it must have felt so good to be able to do some­thing, to give us some­thing.  They were such inter­est­ing dona­tions: not com­mer­cial or mon­e­tary or valu­able.  They were sim­ply out­pour­ings of sym­pa­thy, and we need­ed them.

Of course there was one tan­gi­ble gift that became part of Avery’s life and has fol­lowed her every­where.  Abby Bear.

Abby Bear — dozens of Abby Bears — were sent to us by a school in Alaba­ma, and dis­trib­uted to all the kinder­gart­ners.  She has moved with us across an ocean, and to three Lon­don homes.  Some­thing tells me she’ll be mak­ing the trip to uni­ver­si­ty in four years’ time.

On our way home from the qui­et tour of our school, I asked Avery, “What do you remem­ber from that day, Sep­tem­ber 11?  Do you remem­ber any­thing special?”

Long pause.

“Well, I remem­ber that I was the last one in through the red door.  And then, there was a very loud noise, and all the pigeons flew in the same direction.”

So we went back.  That Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, a cold and bit­ter day, there were many odd things to notice.  Cheer­lead­ers!  A march­ing band from the local high school!  Hun­dreds of reporters, among them a love­ly writer from Peo­ple Mag­a­zine who includ­ed us in his sto­ry.  The chan­cel­lor or com­mis­sion­er or what­ev­er he is called, of Edu­ca­tion turned up, the pres­i­dent of the PTA at whom I had so unhelp­ful­ly cursed on Sep­tem­ber 11, made a speech.  Final­ly our beloved Anna Switzer, the most for­mi­da­ble and yet warm-heart­ed prin­ci­pal any school will ever know, wel­comed us.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing any­one said because I was too busy try­ing not to cry.  Unsuc­cess­ful­ly.  Every­thing to do with Avery always makes me want to cry, but it was a bit more so that day even than usu­al.  I looked at Anna Switzer and won­dered how she had sur­vived the last five months: the wor­ry, the pres­sure, the con­tro­ver­sy over the air qual­i­ty — should we or should we not return? — on top of the usu­al prob­lems any school has, like nev­er enough mon­ey for any­thing.  Anna was inde­fati­ga­ble.  When she dis­cov­ered that Avery, a low­ly kinder­gart­ner, used hand­ker­chiefs instead of tis­sues, she gave her one.  “I col­lect them,” she explained.  Avery has it still.  Per­haps it was in her pock­et that day.

Through­out the speech­es, I felt myself dis­in­te­grat­ing a bit inside.  Here was the day we had all been wait­ing for!  Why was­n’t I com­plete­ly hap­py?  I think there was a lot of anger under­neath my gen­er­al wor­ry and fear, anger that made it hard to get to the cel­e­bra­to­ry bit.  How mon­strous it was that we should be forced into this sit­u­a­tion at all.  How unac­cept­able that we should have to stand there, feel­ing tear­ful and grate­ful and thank­ful and SPE­CIAL.  Why should John have to spell out “PS 234” in raisin toast for Avery’s birth­day?  I was sud­den­ly in the mood to throw a bowl of cere­al at her in the morn­ing and get back to being casu­al, and ordinary.

But we got through the cer­e­mo­ny.  Abby gath­ered up her charges, in all their human vari­ety and small stature.  That kinder­garten class was her first ever job.

Final­ly they went into the school, through the red door.  Avery was gone.  School was open.  And noth­ing bad happened.

We sol­diered on.  I dis­cov­ered what it was like to be part of the PS 234 com­mu­ni­ty.  The PTA — a much more bossy and vocal group than our Eng­lish school’s “Par­ents Guild” — ran the place.  We raised tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­vide our school with a library, where I worked from Day One, labelling each and every book with a bar­code so the col­lec­tion could be com­put­er­ized, for the first time.  This was the view from the win­dow of the library.

Only if you had been there before Sep­tem­ber 11 would you know that you should­n’t be able to see any sky from this win­dow.  There should be only the build­ings, as far, real­ly, as the eye could see.  These trail­ers and trucks down below housed emer­gency work­ers well into the sum­mer that year.

Dur­ing the days I spent bar­cod­ing books, there were sur­re­al moments.  An announce­ment over the loud­speak­er.  “The kinder­garten trip to Stat­en Island has been can­celled due to a bomb threat at the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty.  Pick­up at nor­mal time today.”  There was Lau­ra Bush’s vis­it to read to the chil­dren, a vis­it com­plete with escorts from the Nation­al Guard, car­ry­ing rifles and auto­mat­ic weapons into our school.

But in gen­er­al, some­thing like nor­mal life pre­vailed.  We held the annu­al Spring Auc­tion which raised mon­ey for the art and music depart­ments.  I became the head of the Book Sale which took place every semes­ter in the very hall­way where we all had stood, won­der­ing what to do, on Sep­tem­ber 11.  In that same hall­way, I read with chil­dren who were hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up.  (Actu­al­ly most­ly what I did was lis­ten to child­ish chat­ter as the kids would much rather gos­sip than read aloud.)  I was class moth­er, so I went on count­less school trips to arbore­tums, zoos, muse­ums.  Grad­u­al­ly our mem­o­ries of the school as a place of hor­ror and uncer­tain­ty became replaced with cozy, messy, shouty mem­o­ries of kids with sticky hands.  Avery became used to see­ing me at school, in school, near­ly every day.  It was the only way I could think of to cope.  It was a bit of a cheat real­ly: I was in the­o­ry “leav­ing her at school,” because I left her in the school­yard and kissed her good­bye.  But I was there.

One day John told me some­thing he had­n’t want­ed to tell me before.  He had been invit­ed to a finan­cial infor­ma­tion ser­vices break­fast at “Win­dows on the World,” the restau­rant at the top of the World Trade Cen­ter, on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11.  He had decid­ed he was too busy to go.  Every­one there died.

These adjust­ments and expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries had unex­pect­ed effects on me, per­haps on all of us.  I had my first and only ever bor­der­line sui­ci­dal thoughts.  Not that I real­ly want­ed to be dead, but some­times the over­whelm­ing pre­cious­ness of being alive, and the lin­ger­ing fear of how much we all had to lose, over­whelmed me.  I imag­ined, briefly, how much eas­i­er it would be just to throw it all away myself, take the bull by the horns, just give in, give up.  At times like that I decid­ed to think it was a nor­mal stage of griev­ing, and I retreat­ed under a duvet with a pile of cats, an old famil­iar video on the tele­vi­sion, and wait­ed out the day until it was time to pick Avery up at school.  See­ing her again always made the unspeak­able fears retreat, for a time.

Sum­mer came.  We all went back to play­ing in the park across the street from the school, where one scary evening in win­ter a team in Haz­mat suits had come to vac­u­um up the sand­box.  That’s how crazy life was in the months after we went back to school.  Some city offi­cial would wake up in the mid­dle of the night and say to him­self, “Oh my God!  That sand­box!  There could be ANY­THING in it.  Quick, get rid of it.  Maybe no one will notice us there.”  And we’d wake up to a brand­new, clean­ly filled sand­box for the first time in liv­ing mem­o­ry, when for sure neigh­bor­hood chil­dren had been squat­ting there and doing who knows what for years.

That same offi­cial, respond­ing to the pleas of still-upset par­ents, installed some sort of mag­ic air-mea­sur­ing bal­loon at the top of the school­yard.  Every once in awhile, there would be no “yard,” what we called “recess,” because some num­ber mea­sur­ing some­thing had been too high, that morn­ing.  Now, in hind­sight, I think so many of these “offi­cial” mea­sure­ments and actions were a sort of “pay no atten­tion to the man behind the cur­tain,” as we all vague­ly hoped some Wiz­ard was look­ing after us.

There were, once again, birth­day par­ties in the park, how­ev­er.  Ice cream and cake wait for no man.

On the last day of school that year, the hugs and kiss­es were fer­vent.  We said good­bye to Abby who with her per­son­al brand of emo­tion­al glue had held us all togeth­er, indi­vid­u­al­ly and as a group, since Sep­tem­ber 11.  The new school year would be a fresh start, anoth­er “first day of school.”

Every year we observe the anniver­sary, in small ways.  We watch the names being read on tele­vi­sion.  Alyssa called me the first year.  “They were on the Cs, and I had to go to the gro­cery.  When I got back, they were only on the Ms.”  Every year I speak in an email to Jen, the moth­er I stood with on the cor­ner when the plane went over.  I speak to Kath­leen, Cici’s mom, with whom I shared the whole ter­ri­ble day.  Every year I speak to my friend at Can­tor Fitzger­ald, a lit­tle about Sep­tem­ber 11, a lit­tle about art.  Here in Eng­land we go to the beau­ti­ful memo­r­i­al to the 67 British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square where the Amer­i­can Embassy looms.

Every year we ask Avery what she remem­bers and some­where along the line, the mem­o­ries (as few as they were) went from real mem­o­ries to only sto­ries being told about what she remem­bers being told she remembers.

This spring, out of the blue, the phone rang here in Lon­don as we were still unpack­ing box­es from our lat­est move.  “Hi, this is Doug, from that Cana­di­an news­pa­per who inter­viewed you and Avery in Novem­ber, after Sep­tem­ber 11.  Do you remem­ber?  You showed me the hat you bought for Avery from the Afghan store in New York, dur­ing the first part of the war.  Do you remember?”

Sud­den­ly I did.  I told him I’d call him back, scram­bled to my feet, ran up to Avery’s room at the top of the house, root­ed through her clos­et, and final­ly found it.

I called him back and he asked many ques­tions about how we had coped in the years since that day.  Avery over­heard my half of the con­ver­sa­tion and came into the room after I had hung up.  “Do you guys real­ize that I know less about Sep­tem­ber 11 than any­one else my age?  I was the only one who was there, and I don’t know any­thing about it!  It’s prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing that will ever hap­pen in my life, and I was left out of the whole thing.”

(My friend Eliz­a­beth smiled wise­ly when I told her this sto­ry.  “We hope it’s not the more inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing what will ever hap­pen to her.”  I smiled more grim­ly and said, “Maybe we don’t.  Maybe that’s as inter­est­ing as it needs to get.”)

“You were four years old!” I said, imme­di­ate­ly defen­sive.  “You did­n’t have any busi­ness know­ing any­thing about it.  You were a baby!”

We talked about the day, what had hap­pened to her.  “I remem­ber the school was REAL­LY crowd­ed!”  And of course she remem­bers Abby.

“Go ahead and find out any­thing you like,” we said final­ly.  Avery is an invet­er­ate news house, addict­ed to the BBC and vocif­er­ous­ly well-informed about all cur­rent events, much more so than I.

We will nev­er know if it was the right thing to do, to pro­tect and shel­ter her.  Chil­dren are resilient, every­one always tells me.  Peo­ple in gen­er­al are resilient.  One thing I cer­tain­ly learned from Sep­tem­ber 11 and the days and months and years after­ward is a sort of mod­i­fied Niet­zsche tru­ism: “That which does not kill you does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make you stronger, but you are still alive.  Get on with it.”

We con­tin­ue to try.  On this anniver­sary my great­est hope is to remem­ber, then put the mem­o­ries down by the side of the road, and walk on.

(click here to read of what hap­pened to us on the day of the events)