My closest tie to the Twin Towers is my mother, who worked there for ten years of her life. So I guess I’ll begin there. The story begins in 1993, when she was working in Tower 2. She was a new accountant on the 22nd floor when the truckload of bombs drove into the building. I don’t know how she felt about the disaster (she doesn’t express her feelings well), but I can imagine a new mother with a new job entering into a new threshold of her life, halted at the doorway by bombs. She must have been scared; so many different emotions. My family was never into commemorating things; but with this fearful event, we did something. Though the thing we got was little, to us it was big.
We got a mug. As a child, it was my favorite: dark blue with the word “Remember” on it, to commemorate the victims of the bombings. My mother bought it, and I grew up drinking from this cup, wrought from the pain of memories. When 9/11 came, my family didn’t have any losses, but others did. And they truly had to drink the pain down whole. I’ve read the stories of so many different 9/11 experiences, all so heartfelt and grandiose, and pertinent to the human experience. But mine is so petty. I never deemed it worthy of being inked, and I still don’t. But this assignment beckons, and I guess I have to.
My mother stopped working at the towers 2 years before 9/11 occurred. She wasn’t in the towers, so we didn’t get anything at all to commemorate her safety. Perhaps this is reflective of our collective attitude towards the disaster. We didn’t get a mug, my mom wasn’t too scared when she came home. Were we indifferent? That’s how I remember it. …But I did worry. She had worked there for all of my childhood, and when I saw the first airplane hit, my brain in shock had forgotten that she worked someplace else. I was so scared. “Is mom in those towers?” “No,” my dad answered as we watched TV, “She called and she’s walking home now.” I thanked God for having spared my mom by such a large margin of two years. But these thoughts lasted only for a few seconds.
The bulk of my thought process made no sense; I don’t even understand my thoughts now. They were so petty. I thought next of these pickled radish sandwiches my grandma used to make for us, and their taste when we ate them picnicking at the base of the towers. I missed the taste of the sandwiches. I missed my grandma. I wanted my mom to be home. And I didn’t want to see the towers burning on TV anymore. So, I told my dad to turn the television off, and we sat there in silence in a living room unlit, waiting for my mom.
