HITTING HOME

Every 9.11 since 2001 people ask each other “Where were you when IT happened?” I find it so intriguing that people from Oregon to Florida ask each other this question…people who had no connection w/ the Pentagon or Pennsylvania or the Twin Towers…but who long to connect with each other. To find some sort of camaraderie in your sense of security or peace being rattled.

So, on that September morning, I was in my very solitary office in the back of a large church building in Michigan where I had been working as a Worship Leader for 18 months since moving there from India. I was a 4-month newlywed. I had experienced more transition in the 2 years leading up to that moment than at any other time in my life. Something popped up online on my computer from CNN, I immediately drove down the street to my friend Joanne’s house to plant myself in front of her T.V. I remember watching the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. My dad was on a flight from Boston that morning but I couldn’t get a hold of him. I was terrified (as we all were). Then the next tower. Still no answer from Dad. There in the Big Mitten feeling completely helpless watching these frantic New Yorkers. Later that day I finally heard from Dad. He shared that he’d just transferred offices from one that was across from the World Trade Center. Really, what could be said? We both just sat silently on the phone.

That night, our church was flooded with mourners. People not sure where to go…but church seemed right. We prayed. We reflected. We attempted to comfort people. Our friend, Sarah, who was on staff with us at our church who had some contacts in Brooklyn, planned a work-trip and invited our whole town to join in. A Greyhound bus and driver was donated. An old church in Brooklyn said we could sleep on their floor and use their 1 shower (yes, 1). My husband and I looked at each other and said not only said “YES” but hoped with years of experience taking groups to devastated locations around the globe that maybe we could be helpful. (We had worked for a humanitarian aid non-profit, World Help, and I can’t even keep track of how many third-world or poverty-stricken countries to which my husband brought groups to work and serve over the years. All my trips involved India and working with groups there and having just returned from there, it was very fresh in my mind and senses.)

So around September 13th or so (not sure the exact date), a busload of us from Jackson, MI filled a bus and headed towards NYC. I’ll never forget seeing the smoldering view when we got in close proximity to downtown. You could smell it. You could taste it. It was bone-chilling. And, I’d forgotten that view. I spent my entire childhood about 2 hours north on route 95 in CT. My school field trips were to the Bronx Zoo, Ellis Island, Mets games. I stopped feeling like a mid-western transplant and felt like a NorthEasterner in that moment. On a bus again headed toward the city, but this was no trip to the zoo nor would it involve watching Lenny Dykstra in the outfield. Yet I felt like a little girl all over again; so small and helpless.

Our assignment was splitting our group into 3 shifts serving at the Salvation Army right in lower Manhattan. Scott and I led the Midnight to Morning crew. We were there to unload supplies being generously donated from all over the country. Mostly water bottles and ventilation masks. I remember the first night of volunteering, it was dark (of course) and the donations were coming in so quickly that we were creating mountainscapes of water bottles on the sidewalks surrounding the building. There was one night we sat in refrigerated trucks unpacking brown-bag lunches from kids around the city for the emergency crews: they had handwritten notes in them. We had to save the notes, remove the refrigerated foods and separate the non-perishables. I can remember sitting there in a giant Salvation Army Coat shivering in that icy truck holding those precious crayon-written notes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my hands in the dark night thinking ‘this is an interesting way to not sleep in the city that never sleeps’. There was talk that we would soon be serving at Ground Zero. But it would involve security checks, hard hats, & lots of ventilation masks.

Random sleepless New Yorkers would show up to volunteer. They would work all night and then go to work the next morning- but it brought them some sort of comfort to be “doing something” they all would say. I still have an obscure Sting album I discovered because of one of the local volunteers I became friends with one of the first nights working there. As we would walk to the subway after our shift, we passed walls and poles filled with “have you seen so-in-so” posters, parks filled with burning candles, crying people – we walked through several parks where people were holding vigils for lost/missing loved ones. It was eerie. We had Salvation Army Ground Zero volunteer tags around our necks…and people kept thanking us. It was uncomfortable. Ridiculous, really.  It was devastatingly sad. At that point, many people thought they will still find their husband or son and wife in the rubble.

We decided after the first morning of trying to sleep during the day on an old wood floor while the next crew was getting ready to their shift that maybe sleeping wasn’t going to happen for us after our shift. So that next day our crew explored the city after our shift. I remember having an bandana on my head looking rather disheveled and we were invited onto the set of Good Morning America. Again the tags around our necks (and our appearance) and people thanking us. We were sitting 20 feet from Diane Sawyer. I was struck by how even more beautiful in real life she was than on TV (pretty sure God gave her the nicest legs of any woman, ever. and unfairly long). Charlie Gibson told a dirty joke during a commercial break. They interviewed Jerry Falwell who said something terrible about the 9.11 attacks being vengeance from God. I think I audibly gasped. We walked back out into the daylight, exhuasted, and some of the group suggested that one of the girls in our group and I stand in the line to get on a taping of the teen MTV show TRL across the street. At 26, I was far from being a teen and definitely looked like a freak in my work clothes and head scarf, but they marched us right on the set near Carson Daly and sat us right up front and center next to Jewel who was performing her song “HANDS”. Bridget and I got to meet her, and I, in my typical fashion, acted like a moron when I met her. (I tend to just nervously giggle when I meet famous people). The song was everything TRL was not: the moment was hopeful, we were haggardly not-teenager-looking but welcomed there with open arms. So, while still on a roll of sleep-deprivation, we then headed over to the Letterman show and got right in. It was the first show post 9.11. It was toned down. Letterman was appropriately serious yet comforting. Jewel sang HANDS again. There was a little bit of laughter but it felt out of place.

Later that evening when we awoke from our little “nap” back on the church floor in Brooklyn we got word that our crews would be heading to Ground Zero. Our group was buzzing. Nervous. Anxious. Of course we were all filled with curiosity-desiring to see first hand what we saw on the news. But then we found out only a certain number were approved to get into Ground Zero per shift: and that’s when Scott and I knew that our job was facilitator not participator. The group we brought from Jackson, MI needed that experience and we were here to help them have that. Our crew (except for us) was taken to Ground Zero: hard hats and all. They shook DeNiro’s hand, they have stories of smoke and firemen and rubble.  They had pictures in ventilation masks and journal entries about handing ham sandwiches to heroes. But there we were still schlepping towers of water bottles back at the Salvation Army. And you know what? It was really ok. I had gotten close enough. And after years of taking groups of Americans from the Delhi airport through train stations where lepers lay near the tracks and watched them shell-shocked and in tears boarding their train, I knew that we all have our role to play. I guess in the end I’m never sure how much “help” I really am but in the process I know that at least attempting to serve people around me is a beautiful way to cope. With sadness. With pain. With tragedy.

And now, a decade later, 2 kids later, a move to NC later, I see the news, I hear the 9.11 documentary stories and I remember one thing: brokenness is everywhere and God needs water-schleppers and question-askers. (also, I think about how water bottles are killing our environment, but that’s another post).  September 11th has made us confident to ask each other “Where were you that day? Did you lose someone you loved?” Tragedies happen daily yet we, perhaps because of our aloof American culture, fail to delve into each other’s lives and truly inquire of each other. If anything can good can come out of an evil act may it be that we continue to look into each others’ eyes (and away from our computer/phone screens) and ask each other below-the-surface questions and not only listen to the answer but seek to help each other in  REAL and meaningful ways. If there’s anything we shouldn’t forget, it’s that.

“Heartache came to visit me but I knew it wasn’t ever after

We’ll fight, not out of spite

For someone must stand up for what’s right

‘Cause where there’s a man who has no voice

There ours shall go singing”

“HANDS”- Jewel