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Saturday, September 13 Birthday not death day
how i spent the 911 anniversary it went something like this i woke up watched the memorial services on tv and remembered how la cubana took me to an office overlooking ground zero last year and we watched from many stories above i think tv was better this year 2 years later tv is better for the next several hours la cubana arrived in full scale work mode i walked from the east village to the water on the west side but the reunion they were hosted was a free dinner and reunion for the volunteers and I hoped if I didn't see anyone I knew at least I would be around a place filled with people who felt the way I did on this day. It turned out to be the best place to take Safia. I walked around and looked at the giant 911 quilt put together by a girls school, the many drawings from the art therapy program, the private rooms for meetings and for massage. An older man wearing several ground zero security tags walked by. I recognized him from St. Pauls. This was the podiatrist "Al the foot doctor." Needless to say he was the most popular guy around. He spend 8 months in the church massaging the feet of the workers. Margie the great cheerleader from the point thank you perch on the west side highway arrived. She came with her brother. They had spent a year on the highway waving and holding up thank you signs for the ground zero crews. A lot of Salvation army workers arrived, they had doled out sandwiches, soup, socks all the s's. Many of them wore their bits of ground zero memoirabilia, much the way Vietnam Vets might in a veterans hall. I began to realize that the room was full of the people who had come down there to offer relief to the workers who had come down there to dig. Two years later it was the relief volunteers who now needed relief. I will admit to you that I found something frightening about the thought of coming to this place often. I liked the chance to relive and remember two years later but to come all the time, every week, i think would make me feel like I was still there, that I was not moving forward. But that's me. For Margie, an elderly woman who walked with a cane and the help of her elderly brother, I imagine that going back to a life of a retired, semi handicapped woman We filled up on chips and tuna fish thinking that was dinner and then a really decent meal of salad, pizza, turkey and fried chicken showed up. I was full, but being a pig, I decided to eat some salad and chicken Safia created a masterpiece of feathers and twirly things. I saw Lisa the mastermind of this operation, an adorable little vixen who I still think looks like Valerie Bertinelli and I promised her a piece of art for her office. Most of the people there knew each other, if not from ground zero, then from the weekly meetings held there for the "ground zero fellowship." For me, one night of remembrance on the anniversary was enough. I might come back on the 3rd year, I might not, but anything more than that, for me, would feel like stepping back into a place I only want to recall from a distance. I'm glad September Space is there and I'm glad that two years later there is a place for Margie the worlds greatest cheerleader to go and cheer some more and I'm glad that two years later, Al, a short elderly foot doctor can have a place to go where he can wear his security badges like medals and find people who think they are medals and maybe, they are. For me...well...it's time to move on...I stepped back into this world for a few days..I reposted my story from two years ago...I let myself roll in the good, bad, horrible and beautiful for a few days... and now it's time to proceed. Now is the time for life not death. Now is the time for newness not the re-hashing of old. I promised you all that I would re-post my pieces from two years ago for much of this month, but I think today will be my last post on the subject of "911" for awhile. It's just not healthy for me to dwell on this. What I will remember most about my night at September Space was the wonderful piece of art Safia created and how when we left she told her mother that it was not what she expected. "It was the best party..mommy....like a birthday party!" Yes...Safia I think you have the right idea......a birth party ...not a death party... As for Adeena, well I suspect this will all wind up in one of her poems one day...and that's just perfect to me... Two years later it is poetry, art, children, joy, new-ness birth, peace, love, family, friendship and goodness that I want to dwell on. Thank you to September Space for offering me a safe place to remember. But now I must march forward... Thanks to Safia for reminding me that joy and wonder can be found in the strangest of places and thanks to Adeena for going with me and being my own personal cheerleader...and for eating the pie for me... Happy lives ya'all and all my love and prayers to the loved ones of the victims of "911" and to all those who went down there and to all those who didn't go down there but found their own ways to offer up kindness and care.
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