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Tuesday, September 17 highway angels
I'm thinking about Marjorie. I first saw Marjorie on the highway in the fall of 2,001, she was part of the self-proclaimed "nuts on the highway" the cheerleaders who held up thank-you signs and waved as the rescue crews drove down the west side highway to ground zero. She was there again when M.E. and I crossed the highway off Christopher Street on the first anniversary of "911." It was a dark night filled with a strange powerful wind that had started suddenly in the morning and seemed to grow stronger as the day crept in. Tree branches broke off and blew away. Traffic cones lay on their sides. The water mounted again and again in stiff white peeks. It was an electric kind of night. 8:30 felt a lot more like midnight as M.E. and I crossed the highway on route to light "Yartzeit" candles along the Hudson. Then we saw her. She's an elderly woman, age-less in the sense that she could be anywhere from 60 to 75 and neither extreme would surprise me. Her short round body is supported with the help of a cane and a slighlty younger but still white haired brother named John. The wind blowing in from the Hudson just 50 feet away, brought in a steely cold breeze, but Marjorie was dressed only in a light house dress with a "shmata" of sorts draped over her head to keep out the cold. Bits of her snow white hair jetted out from the bottom. "We wanted to be here with the people we've grown to love!" Marjorie explained, waving at police cars. When I told her that I been a volunteer at ground zero, she smiled, reached into her pocket and pulled out a pin. It was a little gold hand making the American sign language symbol for "I love you." "Anyone who was down there deserves to be appreciated," she said. I can't tell you how that simple gesture so perfectly capped off what I'd been feeling that entire day. At 8:30 in the morning when M.E. and I arrived on Broadway a block from ground zero we were greeted by a group of strangers who draped "lais" made out of orchids around our necks. We took the elevator up to M.E.'s lawyers office and watched the memorial from an illegal fire terrace 39 flights above. We were literally on top of the crater of death..of hope. I watched the marchers walk in to the circle. We huddled together high up in the air on our treacherous little over-hang. We held our breath for the moment of silence. We heard the chimes. We watched the families of the victims come in and throw their roses in the circle. The breeze picked up and turned into a tremendous wind and I watched with amazement as what looked like giant fingers of dust reached up and stretched over the mourners. "Restless spirits" I said to M.E. and that's exactly how it felt. We watched those tiny flicks of red fall into the circle and the people too far below to have faces but not too far away to be felt. After the second moment of silence we went back down and walked to St. Pauls. I stood in the place that had been my work station in those terrifying days after September 11th. This place was different now. So am I. M.E. took my picture a sort of "then and now" kinda thing. We made our way through the thousands of on-lookers and crossed broadway. A girl sat on a stool in the middle of the side walk.She held up a little sign. It read "I give hugs." " I want you to have a real New York day now." M.E. said and she gave me one, taking me to the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel for lunch. To the old, glorious synagogue Temple Emanual for a spiritual pick me up. We planned to end our day throwing our necklaces made of orchids in the water and trying to walk all the way along the Hudson to the eternal flame in battery park. We made it to the flame some time around 10PM (I still have the blisters to prove it) but my orchids never made it to the water. I draped them around Marjorie instead. "Ohhhh" she cried in joy.." and you know today is my birthday too!" "Your birthday is September 11th ?" I said/asked bewildered. "Yes!" she answered in a tone that was something like happiness. Happiness? I understood then that Marjorie, like the girl on the stool and the people who sewed a thousand orchids into necklaces and the people who created beautiful pieces of art and hung them on memorial walls and the children who wrote notes and tucked them into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and maybe, maybe like me had found their place in all of this. She was exactly where she wanted to be. Cheering on yet again the heroes of "911." She was glorious. "Say a prayer for us too!" her brother John yelled as we crossed the highway towards the water. "We will."
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