9/11

[geminigirl]

I am spending this September 11th thinking of my Dad and so very grateful that he's still here and that he survived the collapse of the Towers.

But this year, it's different. I'm thinking about how to explain it to my daughter. About what the day means, and about what happened.

I'm also left wondering just a bit, about my Dad...his experience changed him so much. And I wonder if that's part of what softened him, and has made him say things like, "I may not have been such a great father, but I'm hoping I can do better as a grandfather."

I'm just going to remember how lucky I am, and she is to have her grandfather around.

Comments

[ladygreyy.livejournal.com]

I told Kendra about it this morning.

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

We weren't connected then. I didn't know your Dad was so closely touched by the events that day (though you alluded to it a time or two I wasn't for sure what you were getting at - or I didn't want to ask). Thanks for writing about it today.

[geminigirl]

You certainly could have asked. I'm always willing to do one of three thing when asked a question-answer it to the best of my abilities, say "I'm happy to provide an answer but I'm not okay doing it on LJ and would prefer to do it in e-mail or another format" or tell you that I'm not comfortable discussing the topic but if that changes, I'll let you know.

And for a little more insight to things...here, from 9/11/02. If that doesn't make things clearer than mud, let me know and I'll tell the rest of the story.

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

I would have certainly asked before, but at the time I felt like what you wrote (which I don't clearly remember now) was reflective (like today) but was more for yourself or people who already knew about the situation.

How and when did you and your Mom find out your Dad was alive? Was he hurt in the attack?

[geminigirl]

I should give you a little more background about what happened. My father, at the time, had a bad knee. (He actually ended up having it replaced about a year or so after 9/11.) He heard there was "a fire" in Tower 1, and rather than waiting til they evacuated his building and having to walk down many, many flights of stairs, he left. He took an elevator partway down and while waiting in a lobby to change elevators, the building was hit. He walked the rest of the way down, and headed away from the WTC, and to the neighborhood he grew up in (the Lower East Side) and went to a store owned by someone he's known for may years, one that he used to go to as a child. He waited there til he could get a call through to my mother and a train home. My Mom found out sometime early in the afternoon that he was alive and I heard from my mother a little bit later in the day-it took her a while to be able to get through to me.

He was relatively unhurt physically-just some scratches and scrapes. It's hard to say what happened mentally and emotionally.

[goingdriftless.livejournal.com]

I realized today that most of my piano students are too young to remember 9/11 at all -- some weren't even born yet. It was really surreal...

In the fall of 2001 I had a student who had nightmares about planes hitting her school. She told me about it... and told me about how she got scared at school when she heard the loud crash of a box truck's back door closing because she thought it was an airplane crashing. She was 8. I remember calling her mom up and telling her about what E had told me at her lesson... and E telling me a couple of weeks later about how her mom got her a journal to write in and how she and her mom were having special "girl talk" nights to see how each other was doing. The students I taught today... I really don't think today was anything other than Thursday for them. It's a very strange feeling for me.