New York State of Mind
You can take the girl out of New York, but not New York out of the girl. I love the Giants, the Yankees, the Rangers, and the Knicks. I love pretzels bought on the street--and hot handbags sold out of someone's van. I like looking up at the lions outside the New York Public Library and imagining them wisely watching the city expand right in front of them. I adore going into St. Patrick's Cathedral, a church where you can still light actual candles. I find an alcove and light candles to my grandparents and talk to them.
When I see the skyline of my beloved city, it still takes my breath away like a jewel. I know down on the streets it's dirty and grimy, and sometimes crime-ridden. There are homeless people, and rundown blocks, potholes and cabs that'll run you over. But from far away, it's beautiful. I feel my heart leap every time my plane circles. It's something special--I'm going HOME.
Except, of course, for two missing towers--and all the people who vanished, a modern Pompeii.
Today, September 11th, many people far more eloquent than I will blog about my city. I can't say why the city is so much a part of me. I haven't lived there in forever--or at least a good 18 years. Ah, but I have.
You see my books are very often love letters to the Big Apple. To everything about her, but most especially that she seems to have a heartbeat and a pulse. She's alive, somehow. It goes beyong the city that never sleeps cliche. It's made up of people from every walk of life and every place on earth--every one. I have met French cabbies and Turkish ones, Sikhs, and Moslems, and former merchant marines. I've listened to street musicians play on the subway and watched the sidewalk painters near Bryant Park. I've walked near Tudor City and imagined it's haunted. If you listen to people's stories, you realize New York has an energy unlike anywhere else. And this day, five years ago, broke our collective hearts.
What I remember most about it, aside from taking my kids out of school and lying on my bed with them around me, sobbing, was staying up all night hoping beyond hope they would find pockets of survivors. They couldn't all be ash . . . gone. But they were. Wiped from the face of the earth. Very few people who grew up near Manhattan didn't know someone in the Towers, or a family that lost someone--or a family with a cop or fireman who died or still feels sick.
I flew up to New York City two months later. Things had changed. A cop and a vigilant German shepherd guarded the block of my hotel. Barricades blocked certain streets. People were softer, a little kinder. They looked at you as if to say, "Yeah, it happened. We went through it together, didn't we?" We shared a grief, the way family members at a funeral share that experience.
In my books, I've never left. Ava in THE ROOFER, and Lily in DO THEY WEAR HIGH HEELS IN HEAVEN, and Mai and Jimmy and Maggie and Danny . . . in INVISIBLE GIRL . . . Often, embedded isn't just that they live there, but that they would never leave. A love letter to Hell's Kitchen and the old tough guys, to the gritty bars and the hidden churches and cathedrals, the East River and the Hudson, the skyline--changed--and the skyline the way it once was.
I've never left.
It seemed, today, that the only thing I could blog about was my town. My still broken heart. Anyone who cares to share . . . I wish you all peace today.
When I see the skyline of my beloved city, it still takes my breath away like a jewel. I know down on the streets it's dirty and grimy, and sometimes crime-ridden. There are homeless people, and rundown blocks, potholes and cabs that'll run you over. But from far away, it's beautiful. I feel my heart leap every time my plane circles. It's something special--I'm going HOME.
Except, of course, for two missing towers--and all the people who vanished, a modern Pompeii.
Today, September 11th, many people far more eloquent than I will blog about my city. I can't say why the city is so much a part of me. I haven't lived there in forever--or at least a good 18 years. Ah, but I have.
You see my books are very often love letters to the Big Apple. To everything about her, but most especially that she seems to have a heartbeat and a pulse. She's alive, somehow. It goes beyong the city that never sleeps cliche. It's made up of people from every walk of life and every place on earth--every one. I have met French cabbies and Turkish ones, Sikhs, and Moslems, and former merchant marines. I've listened to street musicians play on the subway and watched the sidewalk painters near Bryant Park. I've walked near Tudor City and imagined it's haunted. If you listen to people's stories, you realize New York has an energy unlike anywhere else. And this day, five years ago, broke our collective hearts.
What I remember most about it, aside from taking my kids out of school and lying on my bed with them around me, sobbing, was staying up all night hoping beyond hope they would find pockets of survivors. They couldn't all be ash . . . gone. But they were. Wiped from the face of the earth. Very few people who grew up near Manhattan didn't know someone in the Towers, or a family that lost someone--or a family with a cop or fireman who died or still feels sick.
I flew up to New York City two months later. Things had changed. A cop and a vigilant German shepherd guarded the block of my hotel. Barricades blocked certain streets. People were softer, a little kinder. They looked at you as if to say, "Yeah, it happened. We went through it together, didn't we?" We shared a grief, the way family members at a funeral share that experience.
In my books, I've never left. Ava in THE ROOFER, and Lily in DO THEY WEAR HIGH HEELS IN HEAVEN, and Mai and Jimmy and Maggie and Danny . . . in INVISIBLE GIRL . . . Often, embedded isn't just that they live there, but that they would never leave. A love letter to Hell's Kitchen and the old tough guys, to the gritty bars and the hidden churches and cathedrals, the East River and the Hudson, the skyline--changed--and the skyline the way it once was.
I've never left.
It seemed, today, that the only thing I could blog about was my town. My still broken heart. Anyone who cares to share . . . I wish you all peace today.
posted by Erica Orloff at 9:29 PM
7 Comments:
Beautiful post, Erica.
I can remember reading about the construction of the towers in Weekly Reader when I was in elementary school. To see them fall--and know that so many perished--broke my heart as well, even though I've never been to New York.
I've never lived in NYC but I feel a very real, very great connection to it. How different my life would have been I chosen to go to NYU instead of George Washington. I still dream of living in NYC. People look at me funny when I tell them I want to retire on the upper west side. I had just given birth four weeks ago when 9/11 happened and so focused I was on my baby that I didn't let myself *feel* anything.
But last night, when I watched a very brief portion of those two French guys' documentary on the firehouse close to the twin towers, hubby had to turn the TV off. I kept talking to it in a quiet hysteria, telling the firefighters "Don't go in! Don't go in! Nonononono!!!"
And I finally let myself cry five years later.
Hi Jude:
Thanks. It's hard to describe how New Yorkers feel about New York. Our town.
I will say this . . . my kids love the city. And the first time I took my son there, he was four or five, and he asked me, as he looked up at the skyscrapers, "Are we still on Earth or is this a different planet?" I looked around . . . crowds of people walking en masse when the lights changed--walking FAST. Cabbies flying by faster than they drive anywhere else on streets where that's insane . . . and I thought, you know, it really is like a different planet!
E
Great post, Erica.
Ever since 9-11 I have been consumed with everthing about it. I never have been to New York. And I did know anyone that lost their life in the WTC.
Every year I have my own way of dealing with the horror. I put out my flag and watch programs dealing with the tragedy.
I feel many have forgot 9-11. We can never forget.
karm:
a long time ago, I was close to someone who died in Italy when his plane smacked into the side of a mountain. For years--YEARS--I would see him . . . in a crowd, whatever . . . I would just trun and think I saw him. It was then i understood the strange custom of viewings and wakes. You DO see death is permanent. Without a body, with just nothing . . . ethers, ash, whatever . . . it's all like some strange dream.
E
hi la:
My family knew people . . . the fireman son of a woman I used to play poker with, the brother of my sister's best friend from high school. Like I said, if you're from there . . . in a strange six degrees of separation, you just can't help but know people.
I went to see the pit where the towers once stood. It's still this maw . . . and it was very surreal. Been there a few times since then, and the shock doesn't wear away.
E
I was a little like Karmela in not letting myself cry. I was a stay-at-home-mom by then with a one year old and didn't want him to be confused about why people cry (I figured he couldn't see the cause and effect).
I had worked for a company -- in the Dallas office -- whose world HQ was in the WTC. That Thursday the alarm went off to the news that over 700 of my former co-workers were missing. In the end, just under 400 of us died. I felt guilty for not knowing who had cut my paychecks, who had processed my travel and expense checks. I felt guilty for being relieved that the 3 people in HQ that I had worked with on a regular basis were fine. And I felt horrible for Bill Caspar's family; Bill was a very nice man in our Houston office -- I had met him a couple of times -- and he was unlucky enough to be in HQ for a meeting that morning.
Anyway, in December of 2003 we moved across town and needed to have a window in our old house fixed. I was talking to the guy replacing it and he mentioned that he and his wife were going to Ground Zero for Xmas.
And I lost it. Suddenly, I had tears streaming down my face. Poor man. I apologized, "I didn't know this was in me" and explained and he was so nice and wrote down Bill's name to say a special specific prayer when he was there.
I'm not sure how to explain 9-11 to my kids. One of their favorite books on CD is THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS and it says right there in the story that the towers are no longer there. They know that planes flew into them but not that it wasn't a horrible accident. My 6 y.o. said on Monday that he didn't understand. Well, I tried to explain, neither do the rest of us.
Penn
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