When my second daughter Caren turned 15, her wish was to visit NYC, so that trip was planned in 2003. Since her birthday is near Christmas, we took a flight out to NY on the 26th. It was a very cold winter in the city that month. As usual, NY received us warmly. My friend came to pick us up and that evening as we settled in her cozy bungalow in Queens with her family and friends around her dinner table, we all noticed that outside her big picture window in contrast to the black evening sky, big white snowflakes were falling. Perhaps they were excited that we Floridians rarely experience the joy of new fallen snow; they encouraged us to put on our jackets and go outside in order to walk on the crisp layer of white that was starting to form on the concrete driveway and to look up into the sky and have the sensation of the flurry landing softly on our faces. While we all enjoyed this frozen interaction in her front yard, oblivious to the delicious homemade Spanish bean soup (Favada) that was sitting patiently on the table inside, we relished in this unexpected gift from mother nature. These kinds of moments are heaven sent!
The next day, we went into the city with my friend, who following the same ritual we had established last time I was there with Cris; she would get off from the train in Wall Street (She now practiced law for the NY Stock Exchange) and we would have planned our day so that Caren and I would meet her after work for a late dinner in the city, before heading back home to Queens in a taxi or on a bus.
Now, 9-11 had already taken place just 2 years prior and I knew that this trip would have a different flavor. There is no doubt that just the journey through the airport had changed. Before 9-11, we didn’t have to think about what we carried in our bags, for example. Now we were scanned and re-scanned. Everything we carried was inspected. Everyone was suspicious of each other. We were considered guilty and had to prove our innocence in order to board our plane. I found that I couldn’t wait at the gate without imagining who the other people were. I realized how much my mindset had changed, I had become a bit paranoid. Reason told me that with all the heightened security I should not worry. I also told myself that you couldn’t necessarily know a terrorist by their attire or their nationality. But the irrational side of my brain could easily look at each person and find a quirk in their dress or in their body language and it would make me uneasy.
Aside from NYC, we knew our friends would have changed too. Obviously, they not only lived through that horrific day; they had lost loved ones too in the towers that day, and they were living through the renewal of their home place spiritually as well as physically. My friend and her family all worked in Manhattan and so their lives were a new daily encounter with a city that had been wounded and was painfully holding on to its soul. I am not in position to know what that would be like. I can only speak from the perspective of someone who lived near MacDill Air Force Base, which became Command Central. I remember our Tampa International Airport being hauntingly silent for many days after 9-11 and the only flights were the military jets that would squeal through the air, annoying me each time, as though my mind preferred to be in denial. Aside from those daily intrusions from the air, I had the ability to escape that reality, unless I turned on the TV or radio. My friends did not have that advantage.
The first thing Caren and I did in the city that following morning, was go visit the what had become known as, the Ground Zero site. What struck me by surprise was the amount of tour buses and tourists that were vying for competition to visit this site. On the one hand, it is impressive to see how many people find it meaningful to visit what had become a national tourist destination. However, what comes with tourists? Souvenirs! And one couldn’t take a few steps without someone trying to sell you a relic or a postcard retelling you the story of this sacred site. This is our human story; it is our nature to always want a tangible way to connect to these experiences. (This phenomenon exists at every holy shrine around the world). We pried our way through crowds, many who had stopped to read all the notes with photos of lost ones and posters in memoriam to the dead left along the chain link fence that protected this part of scarred earth from the onlookers. My daughter and I found a place where we could gaze into the depressed plane of what had once been the one of the tallest building in the world, World Trade Center Plaza. A landmark and icon for this city had vanished. The place that had brought me so many wonderful memories from my last trip had disappeared and all that remained was a big, dark, ugly hole in the ground enclosed by other injured buildings that appeared to be gasping for breath.
Peering through from the edge, I lowered my view, and I could see the huge cranes and the semblance of life working hard to transform itself. Looking down into this site was like focusing my vision through a microscope and observing the beauty of a complex micro world that even though I don’t understand what the intricate movements of the examined organisms are providing, one is mesmerized by its resolve and flexibility to accomplish whatever job it is intending on doing. This for me was the first glimmer of optimism I evidenced. In spite of confronting the ugly side of consumerism earlier in the day and the hatred spewed by some people who wanted revenge for this occurrence, I found it comforting listening to sound of the persistent hammering, murmuring, and buzzing that those city workers imposed vigorously on this holy ground on that day. This was the NY I remembered-hope had not died despite the attempt to kill it on 9-11! Like the glorious time shared intimately with our friends the prior evening, enjoying God’s gift of fresh snow without reserve, this moment was also divine! God reveals himself through the unexpected. NYC revealed its beauty once again to me. Wherever I visited that week, the cityscape was different, the people had changed; there was an expectation that goodness would prevail. This is what New York City represents! Where God exists, the good thrives and is seen often through the unexpected. That trip I learned to always expect the unexpected in NYC!
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