September 11th - view from the West

I woke up excruciatingly early this morning—it’s as if my internal clock was pulling me back to New York. This is my first year being away from NY on September 11 – it is a bittersweet transition. Staring out into the tranquil pines of the Berkeley Hills – “The City” seems so very far away, and I simultaneously miss the cacophony and am content to commemorate from afar. CNN is maudlin and the US open is showing tennis clips—life goes on. I can hardly believe it has been three years. It feels like yesterday, it files like another lifetime ago. I have changed so much, NY and the world has changed even more. Innocence lost, lives lost, a constant dull drumming. My friend and colleague Anil Dash has also recently relocated from NY and he has very eloquently summed up my feelings. If you haven't lived through it - you never can truly understand it. Every year I see the faces of the people I connected and bonded with on the days and weeks following 9/11 and I relive some of the most difficult images, moments, and conversations from my volunteer stint. I wrote about it two days after the event and I re-read it every year.

September 11th will also always be linked to the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. At a time when I would have started to move forward and look ahead it yanked me back into that strange emotional limbo of loss and mourning. September has always been a month of change and renewal – Rosh Hashanah, a new school year, the smell of autumn in the air. Before 2000 it was a softly bittersweet month. Summer was over, but a new year was beginning. Now that soft transition is gone—it is a wrenching jarring reminder.

Only now, three years later – with perspective on both events, do I realize the deep impact this linkage has had on my life. My father was a man who believed in community first. He believed in doing the right thing and he demonstrated this daily. I dealt with my shock that day by volunteering at Ground Zero and although my intense daily volunteer work ended a few weeks later - I did not emotionally leave for months. I see now that in some strange way it was a way to stay connected to my father and climb out of the depression I felt after his death. I grew up twice on September 11th – no longer Daddy’s little girl, no longer an innocent protected American.

So, from across the country – I send each of you my thoughts and prayers. Take care of yourselves, I may be in California but my heart and soul is in NY.