9/11/2019 -- I was surprised to learn yesterday afternoon that baby B's school did not make a single mention of the September 11 attacks. We were all huddled around the kitchen island in our usual spots, the girls doing homework as I prepped dinner. I turned to baby B as she scribbled some notes into a binder, and asked if any of the teachers brought it up. She looked up at me, and said no, not a one. Ok, weird I thought. And I went on about my business, boiling spinach, washing rice, and cooking beans. A couple minutes later, the weirdness of her answer resurfaced. I asked baby A about her experience at school, and whether or not anyone brought up 9/11.
"Did anyone mention it today?"
"Yeah. We had a moment of silence in the morning, then Mr. ******* told us a story."
This got my interest. I had already received favorable reports of Mr. *******, so I wanted to hear this. I fought down the urge to say something at that moment, to prompt her and steer the conversation; and waited for her to continue.
"He said that he was lucky. That when he was a young boy, he actually watched the towers get built. And every day he could see them working on it."
I imagined that for a minute. Not knowing exactly how old Mr. ******* is, I had a hard time conjuring believable backdrops and wardrobe pieces, before settling on this: I pictured a living room with hardwood floors in an apartment on the 4th or 5th floor of a typical tenement style brick building - maybe even the homes over on 9th avenue by LAB. The boy version of Mr. ******* sat on an area rug in front of an old Italian man in a recliner. The old man was probably his grampa - his nonno. In the room was a large console with a black and white tv on it. The walls were yellow, and there were maybe 2 small photographs hanging on them. There was of course, a crucifix prominently displayed in this room. The old man was reading a newspaper. The boy looked back and forth a few times, from his grampa's legs to the window. Visible from that window, maybe a mile and a half away were the cranes and scaffolding that surrounded two enormous buildings, currently only 20 floors high.
"He said that on that day, someone ran into his classroom to tell him what happened. And he was so sad. He said id it was the only day he ever cried at school."
I turned to push down the spinach a little, and I thought of the little imagined boy by his grampa.
"You know, hearing that right now almost makes me want to cry."
"He said that he went to the subway to get to Manhattan -- oh yeah. He must have been in Brooklyn that day. Any way, his daughters were in Manhattan -- that's why he went to the subway station -- and there were so many people crowded by the train station. He said everyone was really quiet. People just got in the train without saying anything. Nobody pushed anyone, and everything was really quiet."
It then occurred to me that in all the personal accounts of 9/11 I've heard, no one ever bothered to zero in on such a banal detail as the lack of noise inside the subway stations. The eeriness of...
"And he said that that was also his proudest day as a New Yorker. He said there was a man on his train, wearing a turban. And no one said anything. No one did anything, and the man just got off. Nobody made a big deal out of it."
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