2001-09-25 - 4:51 p.m.

On Friday night before I left, all my neighbors gathered together, spontaneously, in front of my building. My upstairs neighbor, who has lived in the building for 25 years, was away for the attack, and Friday was her first day back. I saw her walking down the street from Jefferson M@rket with tears streaming down her face. I stopped and hugged her, just as one of the girls from my hair salon came out to do the same. She was at the market, where she had had most of her interaction with the firemen in our neighborhood, laughing and talking recipes. She told me that one of them, one who had been identified as dead, was the one that was haunting her when she heard - she said he was the one she was worried about, and she saw his picture posted when she passed the station. Ugh. I read an entry today by someone who came to visit the city, to view firsthand the devastation. I wish I could link, it was an amazing entry, and I'm tempted to send it to my psycho boss, sitting in her office on the West Coast, so maybe she can get some clue as to what it feels like here. To be unable to get away from the reality of it. Because, you know, she thinks we need to "get over it." Don't get me started.

And we're building up our defenses, a little. Now, when we walk by the police barricades on 11th Street, covered with pictures of the missing, the boyfriend holds my hand a little tighter, and we slow our steps a little, bow our heads. But no more crying. No more standing in front of those walls and kiosks and phone booths, looking at the faces and crying for their families, for their children. When I walk by St. Vincent's, and see that the missing persons wall has been organized and topped by an official sign in the hospitals color- from wall of the missing to the wall of hope and rememberance, my heart beats more quickly. But I don't stop, I don't sit on the steps with the volunteers, because they're gone. There's no other way - leaving the house would be too draining an experience otherwise. I'd be holed up in my apartment, with my blankets over my head.

And I also see reminders, every day, of the fear and ignorance that remain. The Sikhs that live by the park have removed their turbans, and are wearing their long hair in ponytails. The Middle Eastern man at the newsstand at Sherid@n Square cut his hair and dyed it blonde. Awful.

This weekend, sitting in the sun having brunch at an outdoor cafe in a bucolic upstate town, I overheard the woman at the next table talking to her friend. Apparently the woman works in the city, and she was telling her friend "People are just starting to get back to normal. They're barely even going to restaurants or anything." I beg to differ. The day after the horror I was at a restaurant in the East Village, and we've been to dinner almost every night since. Out, somewhere, for at least an hour or two, to escape the relentless news coverage. Out shopping, and eating, and having coffee, and walking around, like always. But it's far from normal.

last - next