One promises not to touch the cliches about the pretty September morn or wax eloquently about Manhattan's snaggle-toothed skyline. If the date 9/11 has no significance for the Gentle Reader beyond the litany of now-trite allusions and allegories, then these words have little significance.
As Paul Harvey used to say, this is the rest of the story. It is personal.
On September 8, 2001, I had planned a visit to Manhattan. I am a commercial driver. The firm I was hired onto at the time had a yard in New Brunswick, New Jersey. My plan was to celebrate my birthday with an oft-delayed visit to New York City. I was offered a run from Atlanta to New Jersey, which due to certain regulations faced by professional drivers, I would not have been able to complete by Monday, September 10.
The key issue was that my truck was bog-slow, with a maximum velocity of 62 miles per hour. Had the rig been a bit faster, I may not be here to tell the story.
My itenerary included the World Trade Center. There was no particular motivation besides that of Homer Simpson visiting that landmark. If one chooses one of the world's greatest cities, one chooses the greatest landmarks in that city.
I wound up celebrating in a different form in my hometown of Atlanta. On the night of September 10, I watched one of the great World War II films (Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape), and headed to Virginia with a load of dog food. It was as simple as that. At 3 in the morning, I parked my rig in a North Carolina rest area.
The next morning I arose to find the message that the second World Trade Center tower had fallen. Holy cow, I didn't know the first one had fallen. The only channel I could get was the ABC affiliate from Winston-Salem.
I had a pocket full of change and called some old friends back in Georgia. First on the list was my old friend Moses Horowitz, a Long Island native. I asked after his family in New York. There was another friend with whom I had celebrated my birthday, to inform that I was still around and still had a pulse. I made it up to the truck stop in Mount Airy, the model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry.
The image of CNN anchor Aaron Brown weeping lingers in an arid and painful place in my heart.
And I was haunted. I was haunted by a too-vivid imagination, remembering a young woman I had taken to the Decatur bus station, as she embarked for a journey to renew her life in Union City, New Jersey. I imagined the gray uniform shirt of a maintenance person, her face, and the knowledge that the planes hit at least a quarter of the way down the buildings.
I remembered her name. It would not escape me. As rosters of the fallen came from New York, I studiously avoided them. For 49 months, through the memorials and annual recitations, over the photocopied handbills, I dared not go too closely for the abject terror that my passivity had condemned this woman to a martyrdom in New York.
The month after The Wandering Gentile first published in 2005, I returned to Atlanta from a time domiciled in southern Georgia. I rented a room from a woman of my approximate age in the eastern suburbs. She was and remains a friend, although time and circumstance have put a necessary distance between us.
In October, I was invited to visit Helen, Georgia, one of the world's great kitschy places, with her brother and sister-in-law. She went up in her CUV, and her brother and sister-in-law drove their large Toyota. As we neared Helen, 90 or so miles from Atlanta, her sister-in-law put on a stern face.
"Do you remember my cousin?" She asked, then uttered the name. Her face was not one of joy, but of mourning. I could feel my soul sinking through the floorboard of the Toyota. This was the eventuality I had been avoiding for 49 months.
"Yes," I replied meekly, suddenly enervated.
"She remembers you too! I was in New Jersey, and she asked after you!"
They say that life has moments. One questions whether or not he has answers, but when the answer is obvious, bells and whistles go off. Bells, whistles, fireworks, air raid sirens, and tiny European engines echoed throughout my cranium. This was a sign 30 meters tall and backlit.
The Gentle Reader may be forgiven if one has chosen to skip the body of this extended bit of self serving meta. It is of no purpose or weight other than the conceit that it pleases me.
But as we close on the anniversary of a dreadful morning in Manhattan, rejoice in that for most, those who loved someone associated with the World Trade Centers, that someone returned home later on September 11. God lives in the fact that this evil did not cost 50,000 or 100,000 lives. God lives in the flat tire someone had entering the Holland Tunnel, or the train which was delayed on Long Island. I refuse to believe that good and evil do not have some supernatural design.
I also refuse to compel my brethren to believe as I do. That mindset is fertile ground for the evil we saw as innocent lives were taken.
And for the record, that young woman I spoke of taking to the bus station in Decatur? The one whose life inspired my rejoice?
You, Gentle Reader, would know of her as Mrs. Wandering Gentile.
