What hap­pened to us

On Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001, we got up ear­ly in our Tribeca apart­ment because it was the first day — only a half day, but still, the first day — of kinder­garten for Avery.

I pre­tend­ed to be as excit­ed as she and John were, as she bur­bled on about final­ly being in “real school,” about her new shoes, about final­ly, the next day, stay­ing in school to eat her lunch.

I, on the oth­er hand, had spent the entire sum­mer think­ing I was dying of some­thing.  Not sure what, but sure some­thing was dras­ti­cal­ly wrong with me, I haunt­ed doc­tors.  I went to my GP sev­er­al times, who promised me, “You’re fine, and even if you’re not, what­ev­er it is, we’ll fix it.”  From there I saw a gas­troen­terol­o­gist, an endocri­nol­o­gist and was about to see a neu­rol­o­gist when some­thing eye-open­ing hap­pened to me.  I picked up Avery at sum­mer camp one after­noon, and real­ized that all my symp­toms- a per­va­sive stom­ach-ache, slight tremor in my hands, rapid heart­beat- dis­ap­peared as soon as I had her hand in mine.  I went home, tore up the reminder for my appoint­ment with the neu­rol­o­gist, and set myself to the task of learn­ing to say good­bye to my lit­tle girl, to leave her at school like all oth­er par­ents leave chil­dren at school.  I was suf­fer­ing from pre-sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, not a brain tumor.

That first half-day of school I felt like the world was com­ing to an end.  Since she was a baby, Avery had gone to “preschool,” a sweet lit­tle Montes­sori morn­ing activ­i­ty with her best friends Cici and Annabelle, try­ing to become social­ized, to let oth­er peo­ple talk, to share, all dif­fi­cult tasks for an adored only child both of whose par­ents turned instant­ly toward her the moment she opened her mouth.  I knew that all-day real school would be even bet­ter for her.  She had nev­er looked back for me when I left her at preschool, only turn­ing res­olute­ly toward her real life, hap­pi­ly leav­ing me behind.  I was the one with the problem.

John and I took her to school, or rather she took her­self, that first half-day of kinder­garten, bounc­ing down the side­walk with Cici, who lived in the same build­ing with us.  They could not have been more excit­ed.  She was so adorable, so pure and price­less, that we took lots of pho­tographs.  Here she is out­side the gate, wear­ing the spe­cial new out­fit she had planned for days.  Espe­cial­ly the beret.

And the red shoes, which made lit­tle clicky sounds on the side­walk as she skipped along.

Into the school she went.  I spent the morn­ing try­ing to think of what I was going to do with my year, what every par­ent thinks of as the year from Sep­tem­ber to June.  I had quit my teach­ing jobs the last year in order to write a book, and it was near­ly fin­ished, only wait­ing for muse­ums to give per­mis­sion to use their images.  It would keep me busy.

The half-day end­ed and I went to pick her up in the lit­tle con­crete school­yard sur­round­ed by the wrought-iron orna­men­tal fence, a fix­ture in our neigh­bor­hood.  It was a cov­et­ed school, that rare thing: a New York pub­lic school that was safe, sup­port­ed by par­ents, cozy and suc­cess­ful.  I was sur­round­ed by oth­er moth­ers, by fathers and nan­nies, wait­ing for the chil­dren.  The sky was dark with heavy clouds, the air so humid it pressed against our faces like a wet wash­cloth, tiny drops of rain began to sprin­kle onto our heads.  Sud­den­ly there was a CRACK, a shock­ing CRASH.  We all jumped a mile high, then looked sheep­ish­ly at each oth­er, laugh­ing at our sil­ly pan­ic, as the heav­ens opened and the after­noon dis­solved into a thunderstorm.

At last the doors opened: the big front door to the school where the old­er chil­dren came out, and the lit­tle red door onto the school­yard where the lit­tle ones were shep­herd­ed out by their lov­ing teach­ers.  And there she was.  “I LOVE Abby!  She is the nicest teacher!  And we col­ored, and we’re going to be study­ing chicks!  And how they turn into chick­ens!”  Avery’s words tum­bled over each oth­er as I picked her up, a feel­ing of deep relief show­er­ing me, low­er­ing my blood pres­sure, mak­ing me sigh with hap­pi­ness.  Every­thing was going to be FINE.  Why had I dread­ed school so much?  She had had a won­der­ful morning.

She was so earnest, so con­cerned about fit­ting in and doing the right things.

That night the clouds rolled out, the tem­per­a­ture dropped to a per­fect Sep­tem­ber nip.  The next morn­ing, the first full day of school, dawned famous­ly blue and per­fect.  I don’t have to describe it because it is its own cat­e­go­ry of day now, “a Sep­tem­ber 11 kind of day.”  It was the sec­ond day, so no more fan­cy clothes.  She put on a yel­low t‑shirt and a lit­tle full skirt with appliqued pink and orange fluffy flow­ers on it.  John did­n’t come with us.  Hav­ing his own life to attend to, he head­ed to work in Times Square and I head­ed down the three blocks between our apart­ment and the school, hand­ed her her lunch­box (Hel­lo Kit­ty), gave her a hug and kiss.  “See you at 3 o’clock!” I said, and watched her cavort­ing in the school­yard with the chil­dren who were already her friends.  We were ear­ly.  It was just after 8:30 a.m.

I caught up with a moth­er I rec­og­nized as hav­ing a lit­tle girl in kinder­garten, and we walked togeth­er uptown, she push­ing her lit­tle boy in a stroller.  “Jen, are you at all ner­vous or upset at Tova’s going to school all day?” I asked, feel­ing fool­ish but as usu­al want­i­ng to see if some­one else shared my experience.

“Are you kid­ding, with this lit­tle guy to enter­tain all day?  I’m thrilled,” she said.  We went on chatting.

“What?  What did you say?” I shouted.

“I can’t hear you either,” she said, and as one per­son we looked up into the sky.  As we stood there, on the cor­ner of Duane and Green­wich, the school a block and a half away, a plane approached overhead.

“Are planes allowed to fly that low in Man­hat­tan?” I shouted.

“No!  And he’s head­ed straight ahead!  How can he not see where he’s going?”

“He still has time to turn!” I shout­ed, as I strained to see what was to the right of what we now refer to as “the North Tow­er” or “Build­ing Num­ber 1” but what in those days was known by us locals sim­ply as “the World Trade Cen­ter.”  We hard­ly thought about there being two buildings.

“He’s not turn­ing! Oh my God!”

And then I expe­ri­enced a trick of per­cep­tion that I thought about only lat­er.  First, time slowed down as I watched the air­plane sim­ply park itself into the build­ing, high above our heads.  In my per­cep­tion of that moment, there was no sound.  Despite the enor­mous, over­whelm­ing, ear-crush­ing explo­sion that was occur­ring before me, in my world, every­thing was silent.  The air­plane sim­ply silent­ly parked itself into the side of the build­ing.  And then there were flames.

“The school!” Jen and I screamed togeth­er.  As we looked toward the school, the sev­er­al city blocks that sep­a­rat­ed it from the World Trade Cen­ter tele­scoped into noth­ing­ness.  There was just the show­er of flames, and direct­ly below, our school.

We ran, she awk­ward­ly pulling and push­ing the stroller.  “Oh my God, Oh my God,” we pant­ed over and over.  We reached the school; the school­yard with its red door was emp­ty, the gate locked.  We went to the big kids’ front door.  Par­ents were shout­ing and push­ing.  The pres­i­dent of the PTA, also on his first full day of school, blocked the entrance.  “Now hold on, the fire depart­ment is com­ing.  Every­thing will be tak­en care of.  The safest place for your chil­dren is in this school building.”

“Get the f***k out of my way, I need my daugh­ter,” I said qui­et­ly, and he just as qui­et­ly stepped aside.  We rushed inside, look­ing for our chil­dren in a build­ing we weren’t very famil­iar with, had vis­it­ed only a cou­ple of times.  “Where are the kinder­garten rooms?” I asked some poor teacher who looked com­plete­ly shell-shocked.  “Avery is right in there,” she said imme­di­ate­ly, although I did­n’t rec­og­nize her.  I went in.  There were oth­er par­ents there and a fran­tic rush to find our children.

Then a real­iza­tion swept me.  I was the adult.  I was the par­ent.  I was not with peers with whom I could share my fear.  I was the one who had to look in con­trol, calm and adult.  It was the first and pos­si­bly only tru­ly ratio­nal thought I ever had, dur­ing the events of Sep­tem­ber 11.

“Hi, Avery, there’s been an acci­dent out­side and we’re going home.  Where’s Cici?  She can come with us,” and then there was Cici’s father John, so we grabbed the girls and their lunch­box­es and head­ed down­stairs to the exit.  Once in the round brick rotun­da that held the wel­come desk, how­ev­er, we felt wracked with inde­ci­sion, so many par­ents and chil­dren, crowd­ing the small space.  “Should we leave?  Or would it just be bet­ter to leave things nor­mal?” we all won­dered aloud in var­i­ous ways.  Then came a ter­ri­ble sound, both deaf­en­ing and eeri­ly muf­fled by the round brick room in which we crowd­ed.  “What the hell…?”  We all looked at each oth­er with an inde­scrib­able com­bi­na­tion of fear, dread, unknow­ing, and yet know­ing.  The sec­ond build­ing had been hit, by what, we did not know.

“We’re get­ting out of here,” I said and I car­ried Avery out.  Instant­ly I real­ized I need­ed to walk a cer­tain way, to hold her head against my shoul­der a cer­tain way so that she could not see what­ev­er was hap­pen­ing behind the school, in those build­ings four blocks away.  We emerged into the per­fect blue-sky day to find par­ents fran­ti­cal­ly shak­ing cell­phones which no longer worked (I did not even have a cell phone in those days), par­ents cry­ing, hold­ing onto each oth­er, par­ents vom­it­ing into the curbs.  I walked as quick­ly as I could toward home, three blocks away, uptown, away from the World Trade Center.

We arrived at home in silence, Avery some­how hav­ing divined not to ask ques­tions.  It was the first of the many moments after that day that she showed the sen­si­tiv­i­ty and matu­ri­ty that have become the hall­marks of her personality.

We sat, Cici’s moth­er Kath­leen and I, on the bench inside our apart­ment, hold­ing the girls’ lunch­box­es, then putting them down, then hold­ing each oth­er’s hands.  There was noth­ing to say.  The girls them­selves ran off to play, a bit con­fused as to the short­ened school day, but hap­py to be together.

Final­ly I said, “Do you remem­ber that time at din­ner once, when we all won­dered where the top of the spire of the build­ing would land, if it crashed down sideways?”

“Yes.”

“And we found out it would crash right through our bed­room windows.”

“Yes.”

The ele­va­tor opened into our apart­ment and there was John, pant­i­ng, sweat­ing.  “I saw the sec­ond plane go in from Times Square, and got a cab down to 14th Street, then ran home from there.”  It was about 40 blocks.  Kath­leen’s hus­band John arrived and the two men went up to the build­ing’s roof, while Kath­leen and I took the girls up to her apart­ment, the sixth and top floor of our build­ing, and sat silent­ly togeth­er.  Sud­den­ly John and John shout­ed from the roof, “Oh my God, the build­ing is going.  We’re get­ting out of here.”  We grabbed the chil­dren — Cici and Avery and Cici’s lit­tle broth­er Noah — and rode down togeth­er in the ele­va­tor, emerg­ing into the ridicu­lous sun­shine to head uptown as fast as we rea­son­ably could.  A young lady emerged from nowhere, hold­ing a baby.  “I came out of our build­ing hold­ing the baby and now they won’t let me back in!  I need his food, and dia­pers!  I have no mon­ey, no house keys, noth­ing!”  “Come with us,” we all said, and scooped them up.

We walked, walked, walked until we came to Cici’s father’s office build­ing on Canal Street, and rode up in the ele­va­tor to his news­pa­per offices, which were teem­ing with reporters, this sort of thing being their rai­son d’e­tre, how­ev­er hor­ri­fy­ing at the time.  Every­one was on com­put­ers, on the phone, shout­ing, ges­tic­u­lat­ing.  We came in hold­ing the kids and head­ed toward an emp­ty con­fer­ence room, uncon­scious­ly, I think, look­ing for a room in the cen­ter of the build­ing, not at the perime­ters.  The room was dec­o­rat­ed with a pho­to­graph of the 1930s Man­hat­tan sky­line, dom­i­nat­ed by the Empire State Build­ing, look­ing down to a low, flat down­town.  “We’re back there, now, if the sec­ond build­ing falls down,” Kath­leen said.

And it did.  John was out­side in the dust, hav­ing begged me to let him go down to the site and help.  I shout­ed, “No!  Your place is here with us!”  I sim­ply could not con­tem­plate his going down to the site.  I had­n’t even begun to wor­ry about the air qual­i­ty, what he would breathe in if he went.  It just seemed unbear­ably ten­u­ous and unknown to let him go.  So he did­n’t.  To this day, every anniver­sary, he express­es his doubts about stay­ing with us, about not help­ing.  But I could not let him go down there.  So he was out buy­ing dia­pers and baby for­mu­la for the strange baby and lady in our midst, when the sec­ond build­ing fell.

I remem­ber stick­ing my head out the win­dow to look at the smol­der­ing, smok­ing sky­scraper one moment.  The next moment when I looked, it sim­ply was­n’t there any­more.  It sounds ridicu­lous­ly sim­plis­tic to say it that way, but that was how the day pro­gressed.  Build­ings sim­ply disappeared.

Then it was a blur, the rest of the day, imag­in­ing that the sky was full of oth­er plane-weapons, imag­in­ing oth­er tar­gets.  We heard there were sev­en­teen miss­ing planes, twen­ty miss­ing planes.  No one knew what to believe.  The chil­dren played near­by, obliv­i­ous.  I thought, “What were we think­ing, hav­ing a child in this world?  How dared we bring an inno­cent baby into this world.”  Our thoughts and fears turned to the most basic a per­son can have.  Months lat­er, John and I took some sort of online sur­vey about Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der, then not real­ly a syn­drome com­mon enough to have an acronym, PTSD.  One ques­tion was, “Did you at any time dur­ing your expe­ri­ence fear for your life?”  It seemed unbe­liev­able that such ordi­nary, unre­mark­able peo­ple as we, on a blue-sky day in Tribeca, could answer, “Yes.”

John suc­cess­ful­ly bat­tled his way down to our apart­ment that after­noon, past the guards, the police and the mil­i­tary, and let him­self in to imme­di­ate­ly hear the buzzer, over and over.  There were police­ment and fire­men who had sur­vived, des­per­ate­ly seek­ing water, a bath­room, a moment of peace.  My moth­er remem­bers our telling her that one fire­man took a long drink of water, looked around our untouched apart­ment and said, “Bam­boo.  I’ve always want­ed to do a floor in bam­boo… I can’t believe I’m talk­ing about your floor, on a day like today.”  “We have to try to talk about things like that,” John assured him.  “That’s life.”

John came back up to get us on Canal Street and we all came home, crowd­ing into our apart­ment because, being me, there was food.  Every­one in the build­ing came, all five floors of us, plus the Lady and the Baby, as I think of them now.  And at some point in the evening, her hus­band appeared in the ele­va­tor, hav­ing walked all the way from LaGuardia air­port where he was strand­ed.  They went home.  The rest of us stayed, eat­ing meat­loaf, ribs, cream of some­thing soup, what­ev­er we had in the fridge.  And on that night, around our din­ing table, was born my most pow­er­ful amulet against the over­whelm­ing fear, the exis­ten­tial fear, that had been cre­at­ed that day.  What­ev­er hap­pened, it would be bet­ter if “every­one” were togeth­er.  From then on, I think, I’ve felt bet­ter the more peo­ple were gath­ered around my table.

That night no one, none of the adults, could sleep.  Because we had not let her see what was hap­pen­ing behind her school, because inter­mit­tent­ly for var­i­ous pow­er rea­sons we had no tele­vi­sion or com­put­er (and for some time after that, we delib­er­ate­ly kept her away from the tele­vi­sion), Avery was com­plete­ly shel­tered from what was occur­ring out­side her door.  Our street was the first above the dis­as­ter that retained elec­tric pow­er.  And so we stayed, through the unspeak­able night of the 11th.  I moved from our bed­room to the liv­ing room where I lay on the sofa, con­tem­plat­ing the unfath­omable wound in our beloved city, our cher­ished neigh­bor­hood, the loss of our secu­ri­ty, the loss of our school, the near-loss of my child, as I saw it.

The next day we all tried to live.  I remem­ber speak­ing to my best friend Alyssa on the phone; she was clean­ing out Annabelle’s clos­et.  Why on earth are you both­er­ing, I thought.  We won’t be alive long enough for you to care.  Lat­er that morn­ing I received an unbe­liev­able tele­phone call.  A dear friend of mine who had worked as art cura­tor for Can­tor Fitzger­ald, whose dead account­ed for 25% of those lost,  had been delayed in going to work on Sep­tem­ber 11.  Her alarm did­n’t go off.  She was still here, still with us.  Some­how her being saved only fright­ened me more; the ran­dom­ness was almost the worst.  “You won’t believe this,” she told me, “but a total­ly intact memo from Can­tor just float­ed into my back­yard.”  She lived in Brooklyn.

The neigh­bor­hood showed the scars.  An emp­ty space where the build­ings had been just blocks from our house.  I described it to Avery as “a big mess you’ll see at the end of the street, but they’ll clean it up.”

Our poor old local McDonald’s.

And box­es of fruit cov­ered in that tox­ic, mem­o­ry-and iden­ti­ty-laden dust we could not con­tem­plate, sim­ply had to live with.

I do not do well sleep­less.  By the morn­ing of the 13th it was clear that me sleep­less was not viable, and at the same time, our beloved friends Livia and Jan­ice in New Jer­sey had been beg­ging for us to come.  I called Alyssa, since we did not have a car.

“We are head­ing out to Sea­cau­cus, so pack up those crazy cats and come with us.”

It was the work of a moment to pack the crazy cats up, throw some of Avery’s belong­ings in a suit­case, and head to Alyssa’s, two blocks up.  We squished every­one into her car, and drove toward the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, pass­ing an extra­or­di­nary sight: hun­dreds of peo­ple, just ordi­nary peo­ple, lin­ing the divider between the uptown and down lanes of the West Side High­way.  They faced the lane going down­town, toward the site, and held up hand-let­tered signs read­ing “You’re our heroes, FDNY!”  “FIRE­MEN ARE ANGELS” “GOD BLESS THE USA”.

Alyssa’s dys­func­tion­al dog Sid­ney cow­ered on the floor of the front seat.  We all rode in silence, not look­ing behind us.  Then as we crossed the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, we could not help our­selves.  We turned around.

The black and gray swirling cloud caused by the falling of the two tow­ers, pal­pa­ble on some ter­ri­ble Richter Scale, vis­i­ble from the Hub­ble Space tele­scope, loomed in the dis­tance downtown.

“Where is our city?  Where is our neigh­bor­hood?  What has hap­pened to us?”  We all asked every­thing at the same time.

And at that very moment, every cat in the back of the car chose to behave as if there were a lit­ter­box back there.

“Whew!  Oh my good­ness…” and then Sid­ney’s snout, too fear­ful to rise above seat lev­el nor­mal­ly, appeared like a lit­tle sub­ma­rine spot­ter.  “What on earth are those cats doing?”  It was a moment of hilar­i­ty we all need­ed, to sur­vive.  And yet when our car passed by groups of men play­ing golf in the New Jer­sey sun­shine, I was so angry I could hard­ly breathe.  How dared they?  Now I won­der if I dreamed that mem­o­ry.  Was any­one in the tri-state area real­ly play­ing golf on Sep­tem­ber 13?

We arrived at Livi­a’s and Jan­ice’s house and sim­ply col­lapsed in their arms.  Nev­er had their pris­tine, white, per­fect house in New Jer­sey seemed such a sanc­tu­ary.  We stayed until Sep­tem­ber 15.  I spoke on the tele­phone often with our fam­i­lies in the Mid­west who were wor­ried about us.  Avery rif­fled through Livi­a’s child­hood clos­ets to find the dolls she always played with there.  We drank far too much Scotch, stayed up until the wee hours of the morn­ing, try­ing to make sense of what had hap­pened.  Livia sat on the edge of my bed the first night, stroking my hand.  “I think our world is end­ed, Livvie,” I said.  She held me.  “It will come out all right, you know.  It always does.”  After a decent sleep, I felt bet­ter, but the resumed air­plane flights over­head after the sev­er­al days’ qui­et did not help.  Oth­er peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed the return of planes to the sky as a sign that nor­mal life was return­ing.  After my expe­ri­ence, planes in the sky did not feel nor­mal.  Even now, I have an instinc­tive draw­ing-back when I hear or see or feel an air­plane over­head.  I am quite cer­tain that that reac­tion will last all my life.

On Sep­tem­ber 15 we went home.  The neigh­bor­hood had pulled togeth­er, as we short­ly real­ized was just in our neigh­bor­hood’s nature.  I will nev­er again live in a place of such human warmth, gen­eros­i­ty and com­mon love.  We had two Roc­co’s: Roc­co of our beloved Bazz­ini’s, the ancient nut and cof­fee com­pa­ny on our cor­ner, put up a love­ly sign say­ing many sim­ple, reas­sur­ing things, among them, “We will rise above this and emerge stronger and clos­er than ever.”  Roc­co of our beloved “Roc” Restau­rant sim­ply brought his kitchen out to the side­walk and fed us all, fire­men, police­men, news­peo­ple.  Those of us who knew him who lived there in our streets with his restau­rant, paid every­thing we had on us, in thanks for the love and sustenance.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, a week and a day after the events, Avery went back to school.  Her school, our beloved PS 234, had been req­ui­si­tioned by FEMA and was occu­pied not with school­child­ren but with box­es of size 11 boots and fire­coats, clip­boards and rapid-response telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions units of some kind.  We pre­pared Avery for the “new school” which was in fact going to be a very old school, PS 41, already over­crowd­ed and now set to wel­come an extra 50% of stu­dents from the evac­u­at­ed stu­dents from all over low­er Manhattan.

Before we took her to school, I sat Avery down and asked her what she knew about what had hap­pened.  For bet­ter or worse, our joint parental deci­sion had been to keep the tele­vi­sion off, no news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and no dis­cus­sion of what had hap­pened until she was in bed.  But we could not let her go to school with both her old class­mates and dozens of new, strange chil­dren, with no knowl­edge of the events.

Avery, with her char­ac­ter­is­tic intense dig­ni­ty and per­son­al ret­i­cence, even at just four years old, said, “I know the World Trade Cen­ter is gone, because you told me.  What hap­pened to it?”

“A plane flew into it and start­ed a huge fire, and then it col­lapsed.  Now they’re clean­ing it all up before they can build some­thing new there.”

A pause, then Avery said, “But weren’t there TWO buildings?”

“Yes.  And there were two planes.”

Anoth­er pause, then she said, frown­ing, “That begins to sound like not an accident.”

“No, it was­n’t an acci­dent.  Some very evil peo­ple who were told to hate our coun­try flew the planes into the build­ings deliberately.”

“Why would any­one hate our country?”

“Because we are very free to do and say what we please, and we are hap­py and suc­cess­ful.  That makes some peo­ple very angry and some of those peo­ple decid­ed to hurt us.”

“I think it’s just ter­ri­ble,” Avery said with the final­i­ty of the young.  “I bet some peo­ple died.”

“Yes, some peo­ple did.  But the whole world is sor­ry for us and most of the peo­ple in the world think our coun­try is very good.  And we must con­cen­trate on that.”

If I had been anx­ious about drop­ping her off at school 8 days before, my anx­i­ety lev­el was now at a com­plete­ly unliv­able lev­el.  I had the crazy idea that the ter­ror­ists has tar­get­ed our neigh­bor­hood, pos­si­bly our school, and the World Trade Cen­ter was only a con­ve­nient place to park the air­planes.  What if they fol­lowed us to the new school?  As we wait­ed out­side to let the chil­dren in, I felt a fear inside me that I sim­ply could not believe was real.  We had dressed Avery in her Fourth of July dress, too small but still sweet.  It had a small Amer­i­can flag smocked in the front.

She seemed far too small and vul­ner­a­ble to be left alone at yet anoth­er school.

Her hair rib­bons were red, white and blue check.

It seemed unbe­liev­able to me that I was meant to leave her there, a block from the hos­pi­tal where the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies had expect­ed to find their wound­ed loved ones and had left end­less row upon row of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion posters.

We walked our chil­dren into the impos­si­bly crowd­ed school with har­ried teach­ers run­ning to and fro.  Avery seemed fine about being there, and I was at least mature enough to real­ize that what­ev­er prob­lems there were about leav­ing her there were mine, not hers, so John went to work and I left the class­room, wan­dered out into the hall­way.  There I lit­er­al­ly ran into the school psy­chol­o­gist, Dr Bruce Arnold, whose job had sure­ly become about 1000% per­cent more dif­fi­cult than he had expect­ed on Sep­tem­ber 10.  “I think there’s some­thing wrong with me, Dr Arnold,” I said, try­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly not to begin cry­ing.  “I real­ly don’t want to leave her here.”

“There isn’t any­thing wrong with you that isn’t wrong with all of us,” he said.  “And you don’t have to leave.  Stay as long as you like.”

In the end I sim­ply sat in the school cafe­te­ria with oth­er par­ents who did­n’t feel like leav­ing, and John told me lat­er that he got as far as the front steps of the school and then sat down and cried.  It was very hard work being “nor­mal.”

We strug­gled through the days being “nor­mal” for Avery, cook­ing and eat­ing and chat­ting and tak­ing her to dance class.  Our school was moved once more, in Octo­ber, to share a sweet — but tiny — school called St Bernard’s in the West Vil­lage, where at least instead of 75 chil­dren per class there were 45.  Yet anoth­er “first day of school.”  They began to seem end­less and I felt flat­tened by the pres­sure to get past the secu­ri­ty cor­dons that iso­lat­ed down­town, to get Avery uptown in time for school to begin, try to fill my day, then get uptown to bring her home.  The school put up a tem­po­rary wel­come “label” for us, and the beloved bronze frog that used to sit at the front door of the real PS 234 came with us, for the duration.

Often Kath­leen, Cici’s moth­er, and I walked home togeth­er in the morn­ings, dis­cov­er­ing that we felt much the same: reluc­tant to go down into the sub­way, but unwill­ing NOT to go down into the sub­way, wor­ried about the air we were breath­ing at home but unwill­ing to join the mil­i­tant group of par­ents who were cer­tain we were all sign­ing our death war­rants by stay­ing downtown.

Oh, those ter­ri­ble end­less meet­ings in the dark cafe­te­ria at St Bernard’s, lis­ten­ing to per­fect­ly nor­mal peo­ple turn loopy and hos­tile, accus­ing oth­er par­ents of being crim­i­nal­ly neg­li­gent for even THINK­ING we would ever return to PS 234 and its tox­ic air.  And yet these same par­ents picked up their kids every day at St Bernard’s and went home to their apart­ments just as close to the site as the school was.  No one was ratio­nal.  We all seemed to find our own ways both to be crazy, and to cope. Ish.

The anthrax threats came.  We toyed with the idea of stock­pil­ing things: antibi­otics, duct tape, water.  It all seemed so ludi­crous, so rash and ran­dom and life-threat­en­ing­ly sil­ly that in the end we did noth­ing.  And because life goes on, Avery’s Novem­ber birth­day came and both our sets of par­ents came too, to sup­port New York and us, to get in an air­plane and defy fear.

Avery was in her ele­ment, sur­round­ed by the girls she had played with since she was born, con­fi­dent and seem­ing­ly untouched by any­thing that had hap­pened to her.

There were bal­loons, car­ried home as always from the Bal­loon Saloon by John’s dad, only this time just buy­ing bal­loons was tan­ta­mount to a polit­i­cal act.  “Thank you SO MUCH for com­ing and buy­ing your bal­loons again this year.  We are real­ly strug­gling here,” said the plump and fun­ny own­er of the shop.  Every­thing we bought, we bought down­town, try­ing to save our neighborhood.

Roc­co came, bear­ing a lit­tle fuch­sia bead­ed purse for Avery.  Roc­co who had been so wise, one after­noon as I stood on the cor­ner where his restau­rant was, look­ing down at the school, past the FEMA emer­gency bound­ary tape.  He put his arm around me and said firm­ly, “You aren’t doing any­one any good stand­ing here feel­ing sad, Kris­ten.  It will all turn out all right.  Go home.  Go home and be a mommy.”

We began to recov­er, bit by bit.  I cried every day, at some point in the day, or at many points in the day, for months.  Every­thing seemed, as one of my favorite authors once wrote, “like the last train leav­ing the sta­tion.”  Every morn­ing when I dropped Avery off at school, I imag­ined nev­er see­ing her again, expect­ed nev­er to see her again, and every after­noon at pick­up I felt my life had been saved.  The most last­ing lega­cy of Sep­tem­ber 11 for me is that a bit of this feel­ing has lin­gered to this day; say­ing good­bye to my daugh­ter and say­ing hel­lo again will always feel apoc­a­lyp­tic to me.

While it’s all well and good to live each day as if it could be your last, it’s exhaust­ing.  It’s not nor­mal.  Human life depends on a cer­tain casu­al­ness of spir­it, some­times, and that ele­ment of our lives was miss­ing for a very long time, after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.  For me, it would require going back to PS 234 to become nor­mal again…

And we did.  Fol­low us here.