Thoughts from a survivor of 9/11 and Katrina

September 11, 2001, did not start out as an ordinary day for me. I had the day off from work, my long-distance boyfriend was visiting, and we slept in. At about 9:00, the phone rang. My sister Michele: “Happy Birthday! What’s going on down there?”

“Thank you. What? Where?”

“The towers. A plane just flew into the towers.”

My first thought was that an airplane had gone astray and had flown into an air traffic control tower at one of New York’s three major airports. We turned on the Today Show, and it looked as though a small commuter plane had flown into one of the twin towers. I thought about how Larry Silverstein, a client of the company I worked for at the time and the gentleman who had just purchased the towers two months earlier, was going to have a lot of damage to repair. It was early enough; maybe no one was on those floors? Then the second plane hit. Then we heard about the Pentagon.

I remember fearing for my life, even though I was about four miles away on the Upper East Side. What would they attack next? Will they just bomb the whole city? Eventually, my boyfriend and I went out to get away from the television. There were fighter planes flying over Manhattan. But what amazed me more than anything were my fellow New Yorkers. We’re not phased by much. We see all manner of idiosyncrasies, eccentricities and other peculiarities. And yet, there were my fellow New Yorkers – for months after the disaster – looking up into the sky whenever a jet flew overhead. To this day, I cringe a little when I see and hear a low-flying plane.

As we were glued to the television later, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The towers fell. Those grand, strong, icons of Lower Manhattan just fell. That can’t be. I remembered a small piece in The New York Times from the early 1990s. It was about a fire on the 67th floor of One World Trade Center. It was in the back of the metro section, barely noticeable but the last sentence stuck with me for years. “Dinner at Windows on the World went undisturbed.” And yet, here were the towers, nothing but rubble now.

I was lucky. I didn’t lose anyone. There were friends’ friends and friends’ families and coworkers’ friends and families, but no one that I knew personally. What I did lose was an inherent sense of security that we all take for granted. A latent sense of fear accompanied me as I made my way through the City over the following months: bomb scares, Anthrax scares, on the subway, in buildings. I remember saying to my mother over and over again: “They attacked my home. They attacked my home.”

And now Mother Nature has attacked my home. The circumstances are different, but the emotions are all there: pain, loss, grief, fear, insecurity, sadness, mourning. There are signs and pictures posted looking for the missing, just like after September 11th. Friends or family couldn’t call me then, as they can’t now. Circuits busy. People all over the country who are passionate about New Orleans are doing what they can to help, just like the country came to stand by New York’s side after September 11th. Two great American cities that are loved worldwide.

The boyfriend who was visiting New York on September 11th, 2001 is now my husband and we own a home in Lakeview. The internet has been both a blessing and a curse, but most definitely a curse as we view aerials of our home submerged in water and a flood depth map, telling us our home is under 8.4 feet of water.

I can’t erase the images of what our sweet, little house looks like now. I picture things floating around, both our things and things we would never in a million years invite into our home. I can hear the sounds: something splashing into the water, glass breaking, and the horrible silence. No freight train, no children riding by on bicycles, no cars braking as they discover the dead end on our street, no dogs barking, no music, no glasses clinking as we make a toast at dinner like we do every night. We toast to us, to New Orleans, to our home, our lives. We are thrilled to be living in this wonderful city.

We both love to travel, but this is the longest, most agonizing trip we never planned. We started our new life together in New Orleans merely two years ago and are not ready to start another one, but we have no choice. This temporary new life doesn’t feel real and our thoughts are consumed by getting back to our old life, the life we never wanted to leave, the life we loved dearly.

My new friends in New Orleans don’t know that my birthday is really September 11th. I fib and tell the new people in my life that it’s the 10th. I couldn’t then, nor can’t now, imagine ever celebrating anything on September 11th again. So today, on September 10th, I acknowledge my 40th birthday. Today I will cry for my home, my New Orleans, like I have every day for the past two weeks. And tomorrow I will cry for my former home, New York, as I will no doubt be reminded of the catastrophic events of that day that changed so many people’s lives forever. New York rebounded and so will New Orleans. Be they new residents like us, or 4th generation New Orleanians, they will rebuild. A stronger, more prosperous, vibrant, beautiful city will be ours again – in time.