The lady who just had to have something to do; she could not volunteer because she had two small children in tow, and besides they weren't taking any more volunteers. So she found a place on the West Side Highway, where most of the rescue vehicles drove by.
This was the same place where 50 or so other New Yorkers, myself included, (finally, 20 years after high school, I became a cheerleader) held up signs and flags or just gave the thumbs up to the vehicles as they drove by. "Thank you!" we all yelled. "God bless you!" Some of us with no use for words just screamed, "Wooooooooo!"
But this lady had a mission. She'd realized that for some unknown reason, many of the vehicles seemed to think they had to slow down, or even stop as they approached the intersection at Christopher Street, and it was her duty to let them know they could just keep on truckin'.
"Keep going! You don't have to stop!" she yelled at them as she rolled her arm in a come-forward way, like she'd probably seen traffic cops do a thousand times.
"They think they have to stop, but they don't!" she screamed at us. We smiled and nodded, as we had the last 12 times she told us this.
"Mom! I want to go home," her older son said.
"Not now! Sit in the shade if you're hot! Mommy's busy!" Her son obeyed and plopped himself in the few feet of shade provided by the garbage container. His "You Are All Heroes" sign sat folded on his lap.
She was a fairly obnoxious woman, I'd have to say, with a hint of an accent that most likely originated in Brooklyn or Long Island. She had a stout peasant-like frame all the more embellished by the fact that she'd chosen to wear overalls, unusual for a 40-plus, silver-haired woman. I had this urge to give her a pitch-fork and call it a day, but she didn't care what anyone thought of her. She carried an expression on her face that clearly read, "I feel more important than most." I imagined that I might have given her a dirty look or told her to shut up a week ago, but this day was different.
She had evidently walked up and down the West Side Highway looking for something to call her own. They were giving out bottles of water a few blocks downtown, but no, too many young pretty women already doing that. They were making sandwiches near 16th Street, but her kids would only slow things down.
Then she found it, this tiny flaw, a patch of highway that made hundreds of army trucks and sanitation workers think they had to hit the brakes, when in fact there was no cross traffic and with the exception of the cheerleading squad, very few pedestrians to contend with. This was it; this would become her niche.
"Come onnnnnn!!!!! Keep movinnnnnnnn'!" she screeched, her voice growing hoarse and rough, as every bit of the accent she'd probably spent years covering up came out.
"Maybe they'll get there faster now!" she said to me as if to answer the amused amazement in my eyes.
Maybe they will! Or maybe all her effort just like all of our flags and signs and clapping till our hands were raw, did absolutely nothing except to perk up the spirits of the many rescue crews driving into the dusty unknown.
A sanitation truck picked up speed at her beckoning and the driver nodded at her as he drove by.
"You be careful out there!!!" she yelled at him as he drove past.
I stood there watching her, my arms too tired from waving to raise my flag, I was spent after two hours of hooting and clapping in the sun, but she'd gotten there well before me and showed no signs of fatigue. She was charged as if by some internal power pack, and her energy was contagious.
For this one fleeting moment in a week of death and smoke, I found myself filled with warmth at the sight of her.
For this one fleeting moment, I just adored her.
