911

My Dad used to talk about where he was on Dec 7, 1941, when he first heard about Pearl Harbor. Radio was the means of transmitting the news. For my older siblings, TV brought Kennedy's assasination into startling focus. The internet and a cell phone starting the unfolding of the most surreal day to date in my life, 6 years ago while living in DC. I often think of all those families who lost all those people in such a public fashion, and wonder where they all are in their grief, six years later. For that matter, where is America? Bin Laden is still at large, and four and a half years later, Americans, and countless Iraqis, civilians and otherwise, are still dying in Iraq. 4 1/2 years - it is almost as incredible a figure as the lives lost on 911.
A perhaps equally surreal memory is the fact that I frequently think of what I did on the evening of Sept 10th. It was a Monday night, my nephew Wayne had just been born 2 days prior up in Vermont, and I was to fly up there and see him just a few days later, before moving to France on the Fulbright for a 9-month stay. I was seeing as many people as I could before my move, and I sat out on the well-known and mildly glamourous rooftop terrace of the Hotel Washington, looking out over the White House and all the national monuments. With 3 good friends who had all lived in Manhattan at the same time as me, I savored a number of delightful dirty martinis over appetizers, thrilled at the size of the olives on the little swords, and appreciative of the stunning sunset view. We howled over old stories and told new ones. Too late we all took cabs home and slumped our way to work the next morning on the metro. By 9 am, the world was on fire. I have yet to go back to that rooftop terrace, as I prefer that last happy memory intact, before madness struck us all.