Day 9: Falling

I left dinner last night thinking I would write about laundry today.  I did go back to my hotel room and write it, so that post will come at some point.  It’s just when I woke up this morning, I felt something else needed to be said.

After dinner, a group of us retreated to a rooftop lounge overlooking the city and the conversation inevitably turned to today.  This day where anyone who is old enough to remember can tell you moment by moment where they were and what they were doing and what they did next.

We all have a story from this day.

I was 3 months pregnant with my 2nd daughter.  I am sure I felt like garbage.  Nauseous.  Tired.  I had an hour plus commute by train into the city.  I missed the train I should have been on (as I was prone to do at that time in my life) and arrived at my office on 56th and Park shortly after the first plane hit.

I remember walking in and one of my colleagues telling me that a plane had hit the world trade center.  Pretty bad navigation I thought to myself and headed for my desk.

These was a restlessness building across the floor, so I called Tom to tell him something was happening and that he should turn on the news.  I joined a group down several floors to the office of one of our Managing Partners who had a television so we could get updates.

There were maybe 15 of us crammed in there, lined up against the walls watching the screen when we saw an explosion in the other tower.  No one was sure at first what exactly had happened.

Someone said, “that was another plane - we’re under attack” and within seconds a fighter jet flew overhead.  Chaos erupted.

Everyone went into tactical / logistical mode.  What do we do?

I went back to my desk and called Tom again and told him I was coming home.  I grabbed my things and ran to Grand Central.  As I sat on a train, the departure time passed, and the doors didn’t shut.  Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.

Someone came over the loudspeaker and said Grand Central was being evacuated.  People were running for the exits.  Speculation of a bomb in the station was moving through the crowd.  It was pandemonium.

The woman I was with said we should get cash, so we headed for an ATM.  As she waited in a line 50 people long, I stood in the middle of Madison Avenue alternating my gaze between staring downtown and watching the images behind the glass on the television in the bank lobby.

Then it happened.  The first tower fell.

A cloud of black smoke gathered where moments before there was sun.  The streets were flooded with people.  We went back to our office.  Many of my coworkers lived in the city and were offering shelter in their homes to those of us who lived off island.

I was determined to get home.  I started calling friends to see if any others were still in Manhattan.  I finally connected to one of Tom’s oldest friends and he told me he had just walked across the Queensborough Bridge.  I asked him to wait on the other side for me and I took off.

I don’t remember the walk to the bridge, but I will never forget the walk across it.

A literal swarm of humanity pressing forward.  Everything happening in slow motion.  I looked to my right and all I could see where the towers once stood was smoke.  The horizon was fractured.  The very structure of our shared reality trembled.  The world as I had always known it was crumbling.

I remember thinking I would never find my friend in this crowd, but as I reached the edge, I saw that he had climbed a lamppost and was calling out a familiar war cry started by my husband that an inside group of us shared.  I still use that war cry to this day.  If ya know, ya know.

On the kindness of strangers, I did make it back home late that night.  People, drawn together by the rawness of the moment, laid aside their differences to embrace the truth of our shared vulnerability.  To heal each other.  I don’t think I slept that night.  Tom and I just kept watching it over and over on TV trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

On the rooftop last night as I listened to someone else’s story of that day, I could feel all that she described.  She was far from home and wanted to get back to her husband who needed her.  It was so tangible how our stories are doorways into one another’s internal worlds. 

I walked across the bridge from my world to hers.

The grief of that day is etched into so many hearts.  Intricately connecting us through invisible threads.  Threads spun by life itself – singing to us both in moments of beauty and devastation.

In that moment of collapse, we were all drawn into a very deep truth: no matter how high we build, no matter how strong we believe our separations to be, we are all part of the same whole.  What falls for one, falls for all.  The suffering of one is the suffering of all.

The events of this day were a profound unveiling.  Revealing, in a way that no other modern event has, the interconnectedness of all life.  We were invited to see ourselves not as isolated beings in competition for survival, but as participants in a vast, cosmic dance where every thought, every action, every choice ripples through the whole of existence.

Let this day remind us that we are not separate from each other or from the sacred source of all life.  Let it call us to evolve beyond the structures of isolation and division and to recognize the profound communion that underlies all existence.  Where every part is holy and every part belongs.

Even in the darkest moments, I know that the light still burns.  Even when all seems lost, I know that love is not defeated.  I have seen the tomb, but I have also seen the rising.  Do not be afraid of the breaking.  Let the pain soften you. 

Sometimes the towers will fall. Be not afraid of the falling. 

Jennifer

This is the 9th installment of the series 21 Days of Revelation: A journey into the depths of my soul.