Like so many Sunday mornings, I turned the key to the front door of our building and stepped into a quiet newsroom. I sifted through the papers on my desk and turned on my computer and set my bags down on a chair.
But when I sat down, turning my attention to email and setting up the live streaming news of Sept. 11 coverage off to listen to as I worked, I had to stop and take in the unexpected personal magnitude of the moment.
I’ve told the story at least nine times before. How I watched the coverage with my family and a set of wide eyes that September morning. How we waited anxiously to make sure all were accounted for, including one aunt in the South Tower and one on the ground just below. How the day fell to night. The green convertible I’ll never forget with the kids in the back holding an American flag, flapping strong in the wind.
How I sat for hours that night watching the families stand before news cameras, speaking through tears
begging for any information about missing loved ones.
I always go back to those families. I always go back to them because they’re what made me realize we are living stories and where there are voices that have been silenced, we must speak the words. We must tell the story. So many stories would go untold as only the victims themselves could tell them. Stories of birthdays and holidays and achievements. It was that realization that sent me into journalism.
It had taken me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. To put it into a classification. And that night, sitting alone with my grandfather in the middle of the night watching footage … I always associate the moment with my grandfather. He would pass away two months later, while the country’s collective psyches were still raw, suddenly on a more direct level, mine was stripped again.
But this time I could see the story. In the moments when family members passed through the room, gathered at a table, huddled together in the bitter November air smoking cigarettes, I could see it all. For the first time.
So this morning, I realized that 10 years after the day that opened me up to what I wanted to do, to who I am, I was sitting at a desk doing just that, being just what I’d wanted. Maybe it was on a smaller scale than my biggest dreams. But when you’re doing what you love, you don’t get hung up on the technicalities.
And it’s what had me tearing up today.
Ten years is a marker. It’s when you look back and take stock of what filled those years.
When I look back, I look back on two significant events that took place just a couple of months apart and I can see that at the very least, I spent that time frantically filling the loss. The loss of innocence, the loss of a grandfather.
We lost innocence on Sept. 11, 2001.
But the thing about loss is, it’s not a permanent state. It is an unfortunate reality. Sometimes it’s a page. Sometimes it’s a chapter. Sometimes it’s a loss of time. Sometimes it’s a loss of life. Either way, it is an absence that needs to be filled. Sometimes we don’t know with what but that doesn’t really matter. Just fill it with something good. Something comforting. Something warm. Fill the absence with purpose.
Because loss also begs responsibility from the rest of us. To do, not dwell. To live so that life is not left in vain.
We lost innocence on Sept. 11. Two months later I lost a family pillar and I filled both losses with purpose. It has been my very best friend. And I realize how much it means to me because ten years later I have to make the commitment to make it a priority in the face of new changes. That’s what you do for the things you love. It’s a part of my identity, the honorable label of ‘journalist.’
When I think back … Not a single classroom, not an office or a night out or even time spent with friends has ever made me feel such as I do when I’m reporting. It’s a belonging. Belonging is the kind of thing you suffer for and search for. It’s why women sometimes marry before they’re really sure and why kids fall into the habits of the wrong crowd and men sometimes stray toward a dark path.
Everyone wants to belong but you know when it’s real because it doesn’t just choose you, it saves you. It holds you steady. And it’s not even the people in the newsroom, though they are like tribe, but it’s me and the notebook and the notes and the moments when it’s just you and the story.
People always tell me to “live in the moment” but I don’t think they even know what that really means.
We don’t just live in the moment. We write it down. We remember every second of it.
I have to say I love it. Like when a child heads off to his first day of school and his mother whispers “I love you” over and over again, through proud tears. I feel that way about what I do. And as I grow with it I feel I have to keep saying that over and over again so it never goes away.
You want to make sure it’s known. Even out of earshot. When you’re out of your comfort zone.
This Sept. 11, I think of all the lives lost, wish I could tell their stories and am grateful for whatever graces led me to this place. I think of what was lost around that time of year, I think of my grandfather and I swell with something bigger than gratitude, bigger than memory, bigger than love, as I am more committed than ever to living in the wake. Be the voice where the voice is silenced.
