September 11th must have been a maddening day for New Yorkers who moved away.
Those of us who were home in "Ma'ha'an" got to be a part of our city's worst and finest hours. We ran, we feared, we cheered, we cried, we did everything the rest of the world did, but we were here and that was something.
Yeah. That was something.
The out-of-towners were stuck watching it all from the TV.
I thought about this last night when I had dinner with my ol' pal Wolf. No, not Wolf the CNN correspondent. Wolf the hair dresser.
He moved to NYC when I did.
We were both teenagers who were a tad too wild for the Jersey Shore (and a tad too gay).
So we stuck together.
We formed some sort of inner group of suburban outcasts who finally found a place so diverse and crowded that it ultimately became quiet and peaceful.
Manhattan in the early '80s was the perfect place to blend in when your idea of casual wear was a Sex Pistols T-shirt, zebra spandex pants and a pink pair of Converse sneakers.
But we grew up ... sort of ... and Wolf moved to L.A. in search of this thing called "a back yard, a swimming pool and a place to park your car."
"It was so weird watching it on the news ... at the gym ..." he said while digging into his fat-free chicken. "That's why I came to town. I needed to go there ... to ground zero."
I'd thought the reason he was in town was Thanksgiving with the family, not to walk through Tribeca to the closest vantage point of what was left of the towers.
But, of course, that's why he came.
Wolf always had, well, a little too much edge. Let's just say he was the one guy I knew who got PMS ... a lot.
But he wasn't like that last night.
He was sweeter and softer.
As we all are, I suppose.
I've always been an angry woman, well except for the time in my life when I was an angry girl and then before that, an angry baby.
Could be a past life thing, or I just inherited the angry-as-hell gene, but damn, I've had a fire brewing.
I assumed after the towers went down that I'd be the poster child for rage. ... and ... yeah, some of that came, but really ... I don't feel so angry anymore.
Maybe it's because I've now seen firsthand what anger can do.
Maybe it's just because I want to throw some kindness into the mix of all that despair and pain.
New Yorkers are starting to go back to their old selves.
I knew the spell was broken the day the firefighters at ground zero, pissed about the cut back in crews, assaulted the police officers.
Watching them brawling on the news, I sighed and said to myself, "Yep, the 'nice' marathon is kaput."
So we're honking our horns again. We're fighting over parking spaces and telling the slowpokes entering the subway car to "move it along, buddy!"
But we're not the same.
We smile at the armed guards at the entrance to The Midtown Tunnel. We don't look at cops the way we used to, like they were human traffic tickets.
We probably give more money to the homeless and maybe don't go for quite as many manicures. Like perhaps most Americans, we are thinking more about love.
Harry Potter couldn't have come at a better time. We all need to escape to magic land.
So Wolf is in town to come face-to-face with this terrible thing and then he'll return to L.A., I'm sure, as immeasurably changed as all are who visit ground zero.
I'll think of him today as he makes his trek. I know full well what it feels like.
I'm a softer kinder person, but I'm not perfect.
I'm still letting Wolf do my hair when he comes back from ground zero.
Hey just 'cause I'm a creature of love doesn't mean I don't want my hair to look fierce!
