September 11

 This morning at 8:46 we were packing up the cabin we have been renting this summer. Unlike that other September 11, of the hard bright blue sky like a big beautiful bowl over our world,  today the sky was complicated.

As we drove back towards the city, parts of the sky were bright blue and other corners of the sky were black with rain clouds.

We didn't listen to the names of the dead being read today.

We approached the George Washington Bridge.

There was the big flag adorning the bridge.

I thought about all of the Port Authority workers who had died doing their jobs that day.

As we drove along the West Side Highway I remembered how my sister was stuck in traffic that day as the disaster was taking place.

I remembered my friend who was driving further downtown that day, late for his meeting on the top floor of the World Trade Center. At first he was in a panic because he was so late for the meeting. And then he saw the place where he was supposed to be,  and the people he was supposed to be meeting, in flame and collapsing. He had trouble breathing for months.

As I remembered, I felt that same burning sensation inside my arms that I felt that September 11. If you had asked me yesterday about that feeling in my arms I wouldn't have remembered. But I lived with that unnamed burning in my arms for months afterwards just as I accepted that having nightly nightmares of walking through the World Trade Center concourse with nothing going wrong---yet -- was just part of not having died that day.

That day lives in all of our bodies here in New York, regardless if we listen to the readings of the names or not.