I finally went ahead and did it . . . I like this new look better, since it uses up more of the page creatively. I expect I will be able to tinker with it and put in a more pilgrimage-like image soon. I hope you like it too.
Oh, and I finally noticed a little while back that the RSS feed was missing. It somehow got removed when I was tinkering with the sidebar widgets . . . I have now fixed it. My apologies. Hopefully the site will now be more useful to everyone.
But I’m sure to have some good pictures to post when I get back from Rome!
“Where were you on 9/11 when the Towers were hit?” People have often asked me that question. My answer embarrasses me a little, because I missed hearing about the horrible event as most Americans did, by watching it unfold as it happened. I have to answer: “I was asleep at the time.” Yet this also meant that instead of watching a gradually unfolding horror, I got the full impact all at once.
In September 2001, I was doing frantic last-minute work on my doctoral dissertation, which I had to deliver to my professors in little more than a week. I was in my apartment next to Fordham’s Bronx campus, but was without roommates at the time. I worked as usual until around 4:00 a.m. on September 11, then went to bed, but couldn’t sleep for anxiety over my studies. I finally drifted off around 6:00 a.m., but slept poorly. Sometime around 10:30 or 11:00 I vaguely heard the phone ring in the empty bedroom next to mine where I had put it with the ringer turned down low to keep from being disturbed at night. I ignored it, figuring the answering machine would pick it up. Finally I fell into a sound sleep, but was jarred awake again sometime after 12:30 p.m. by the phone ringing — and it continued to ring insistently. Something was clearly wrong. When I finally stumbled into the next room to pick it up, I heard the frantic voice of my mother, calling from back home in Iowa:
“Where have you been? Why didn’t you answer the phone? Don’t you know what’s happened?” She was screaming with anger and crying at the same time. This was very unlike her. I couldn’t even answer except to stammer that I’d been asleep.
I’ll never forget what she’d said next: “All hell has broken loose. Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and destroyed them. Nothing’s left but a hole in the ground. The Pentagon’s in flames. There was another that crashed in Pennsylvania. The terrorists have attacked us.” A chill of horror went through me, but the full meaning of what she said didn’t register. I don’t even remember what I said in reply, or what the rest of our conversation was like. Mom finally calmed down enough to say, “Turn on the TV and I’ll call you back.” She had to call other family members scattered across the country and couldn’t rest until she knew everyone was all right. She was especially concerned for me because I lived in New York, and since I didn’t answer the phone, she thought I might have been downtown. I can’t imagine to this day how, knowing my schedule as she did, she could have even imagined I’d be up early in the morning, much less anywhere near downtown Manhattan, but a mother’s fear is irrational at times.
I turned the TV in my bedroom, sat down and watched the ongoing coverage. The horror which was so impossible to absorb at first gradually took shape and became clearer. I took the cordless phone into my bedroom and talked with my family as we shared our reactions. I sat, still in my pajamas, by the TV all day, not moving, not getting up to eat — the knot in my stomach would have made it impossible anyway — not working, realizing that the entire world had changed. As I realized how many people must have died inside the Twin Towers, I was grateful I didn’t know anyone who worked in there.
The only time I had ever been inside the World Trade Center was in July 1995, the summer after my first year of studies at Fordham, when my mother and two sisters were visiting me in New York. I took them to do all of those touristy things I never had time to do myself. On this particular day, we had gone down to Battery Park to ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth in order to look at the New York City skyline and the Statue of Liberty. We then walked up the few short blocks to the Twin Towers. We took the elevator up to the wide lobby, waited in line with all the other tourists, then a deep breath - and a long, long ride up to one of the top floors and the glassed-in observation deck with its incredible panoramic view of the city and the vast distances stretching away from it in a blue mist. There were even clouds below us! Last of all, we rode up to the very highest spot, the outdoor observation tower, and Mom took a picture of the three of us that I still have. It had only been two years previously, in 1993, that terrorists had attacked the building. We had recalled it in our talk as we walked around the deck, but we felt no fear other than the dizzy kind at being up so high. As I watched the TV coverage, I could imagine people trying to get down to that lobby where we had walked so unconcernedly, but how the elevators were out, and how the stairways we had never seen became a lifeline for many, and how many on the top floor had flames ten stories deep between them and safety. And what it must have been like for them as the towers fell. . .
As the hours of coverage wore on, other emotions joined the first horror. The tears as family members described the last goodbyes transmitted by cell phone from their loved ones trapped inside the towers. The pride and gratitude as we realized the heroism of the firefighters, Port Authority police and rescue workers, and grieved for their deaths. And the confused sense of bitter anger and pity as we learned about the young men who had been seduced into carrying out the attacks . . . and exactly who was behind them.
I remember many other people’s reactions during the following days. Someone in my apartment building put up a long, badly-spelled screed on the inside wall near the mailboxes, adressed “To Osama bin Laden . . . you have underestimated us. . . America will rise up against you. . . We will get you, you murdering bastard. . .” I can honestly say that I felt no desire for revenge. I knew that measures would have to be take to stop those who did this, but I also knew that no amount of killing people will destroy evil ideas. And hatred is useless.
Other people arranged candlelight prayer vigils and asked us to put lighted candles in our homes. I got one right away. I recalled how Edith Stein, a Jewish intellectual who had recently become a Catholic, went to her spiritual director soon after the rise of the Nazis began, and aked him if she should follow the inspiration she felt God had sent her: to become a Carmelite nun. He said: “You can so much more good against the evil in our land by your writing and your work as a professor.” A few years later, when the full horror of what Hitler was up to became clear, she asked him again. This time he said: “Yes, enter the convent. This kind of devil can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.” She did so, determined to make her life a sacrifice of love for the world and the defeat of evil. She ended up a martyr in a Nazi death camp, and is now a saint. Nothing but love can ultimately defeat evil.
I successfully defended my disseration on October 21. My mentor, Professor Gyug, then invited me the next weekend to have dinner to celebrate with him and his wife in their Manhattan apartment near Columbus Circle. It was the first time I had ventured downtown since the towers fell. I felt comforted to see that traffic seemed normal in the city, and people filled the sidewalks as usual; there were even laughing and chatting groups sitting as usual on the edge of the fountain at Lincoln Center. A feeling of pride in my city filled me. Yes, my city. I had lived in the city for seven years on 9/11, but I can truthfully say that I became a New Yorker that day.
It’s really true, though I’ve scarcely let myself believe it until now. I have my ticket, and if my passport comes through in time, I will be flying to Rome on September 24 to take part in the first deliberations of the international commission of the Secular Franciscans overseeing the celebration of the 8th centenary of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. My dream of returning to Rome has just come a few months closer.
I’ve known about this since sometime late in July, but dates were tentative and plans were iffy — but everything is all settled. Most wonderful of all, I will be in Rome September 28, the anniversary of Pope John Paul I’s death. I will be able to visit his tomb and hopefully attend a Mass of commemoration - in the past these have been celebrated by the Pope himself. I’m so grateful for this opportunity. I have a couple of posts I’m getting ready, but probably won’t be blogging too much this month (just like most months, I’m afraid). But I will probably have lots to talk about when I get back!