RIP

[thebratqueen]

I grew up in New York city. A place called Whitestone, which is in Queens, which is one of the five boroughs (Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Statan Island being the others, for those not in the know. Those 5 make up the city of New York).

I'm Italian-Scotch-Irish. Italian on my Dad's side, where his grandparents came over to America and, on the paternal side, changed the spelling of our last name to something french-looking so the family wouldn't get as much hassle for their heritage (Italians being not what you'd call a favored people at the time).

My grandma and grandpa lived through the Depression. My dad was born during World War II. My grandfather, unable to fight for health reasons, helped to build the navy ships.

No surviving members of the family speak Italian, but you can tell the heritage by the way we phrase things. The giveaway is calling sauce - as in something made with tomatoes to put over pasta - "gravy". All Italian immigrants do this. I don't know why.

My maternal grandmother was Scotch. She came to America herself. It was a hard journey for her. Her mother had died when she was young, her father had recently died, and her brothers - who she was meeting in the US - also met with tragedy. One died by hitting the third rail in a New York Subway (he was one of the men working on it).

Grandma was proud of the fact that she didn't go through Ellis Island, because that was for poor people. Not, of course, that she was rich when she got here.

Grandma also had a strong brouge, so I'm told. But I never heard it. Growing up with her, it was just the way Grandma talked. To this day I can never hear a real brogue when it's spoken.

Grandpa was Irish, from the county that my website is now named after.

My various grandparents and their kids lived in Manhattan, then in Astoria, Queens, back when Queens was considered the country. And it really was. My dad tells me that there were tomato farms near them. When you visit the areas now you can't see it, and now that I'm living in the suburbs I get a kick out of my Aunt J, who lives in Flushing, still calling that area country even though there's hardly any trees to be seen that weren't planted decoratively.

Growing up in New York gives you an interesting perspective. There's a classic New Yorker (appropriately enough) cartoon about "A New Yorker's view of the world" where New York is large and at the center, and everything else just sort of fades. That's kind of true. But also kind of off.

You see, New York is where many get their start in this country. Growing up I didn't know anyone who wasn't very close in generation to whoever in their family had immigrated over here. And hey - we've got the Statue of Liberty (Shut up, Jersey) and the UN and Chinatown and Little Italy and all that. On a couple of stations the national news is filmed here. When you're a kid, it makes you think that yeah, New York is where it all starts. Not that the rest isn't important, but hey - we're pretty neat.

Being a native New Yorker is like being a Catholic - it never truly leaves your system. I've lived in different places in the US and everytime someone asks me where I'm from I say "New York". It's what defines me. I could live on Mars for the rest of my life and I'd still be a New Yorker.

We're not rude, you know. Nor are we bad drivers. It's just that our system of courtesy and our system of driving has never been written down. To you it might not make sense, but trust me, to us it's perfectly clear.

New Yorkers live that melting pot that America is supposed to be about. You grow up and watch Sesame Street and get told there that things like the color of a person's skin doesn't matter and you think "Well duh" because you're friends with Laskshmi, Aiesha and those with last names like Chen or Gonzalez. You go to CCD (Catholic classes for public school kids) and you've got friends who go to Hebrew school. Your neighborhood has enough religions of different kinds that your school makes a field trip out of visiting them all and learning about them - and you walk because they're all close by.

My family worked this town. My paternal grandfather, amongst many jobs (including that of ice man) was a garbage collector. (My dad proudly talks about how Grandpa had arms like a bodybuilder back in the day.)

On my maternal side? Well guess - Irish immagrants in New York city. Ask me how many were cops. Actually it's shorter to ask me how many weren't - and those that weren't were firefighters. Except for one uncle who was a city engineer and worked, amongst other places, on the Whitestone bridge which, as you might guess, connects to my hometown.

You can see the New York skyline from the Whitestone bridge.

Buildings are important in New York city. That's because buildings pretty much are New York city. Other than Central Park there's not much nature-wise that defines the town. But everybody knows skyscrapers. Everybody knows you go to Manhattan and it's tall. And that the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for a while. And even though it's not it's still a landmark. So's the Crysler Building, the Statue of Liberty (again, shut up Jersey) and the Twin Towers.

If you grew up in New York City you knew that the Twin Towers were the station symbol for channel 11, WPIX, which played Gozilla movies on Saturday afternoons and is now the WB.

This was your town. But in a way it was everybody's town because that was the point. Everyone was welcome here. No matter your race, creed, sex, sexuality - whatever. Come on in! We've got a statue and an island for ya and everything!

It was honestly a shock to me when I went to college - in Manhattan - and met students there who had honestly never met a black person before, because there were none in their hometowns. When I became an RA I had to sit through classes on celebrating diversity. This was like giving me classes on "breathing - something we think is positve". DUH. How do people not get this? Why would people not want to get this?

My point is - this is what growing up a New Yorker does to you. You're connected to your city, yes, (Go Yankees/Mets/Rangers and don't you dare badmouth the Knicks!), but you're also connected to everything else, because it's not some vague and distant concept for you. Your grandparents came over here, your friends are first or second generation American or immigrated with their families themselves. And isn't that what America was all about? You learn about the Pligrims in school and your friends and family are living that. It's not something you have to pretend to understand. It's your life.

The city is you, and you're the city. This is your home. The place that welcomed you (various name-changing prejudices aside), and had a place for you. It's your home.

***

I was in the middle of a move.

After living in various places around the country, I had decided in November of 2000 that I couldn't be away from New York anymore and I had to come back. I lucked out, because my brother, who lived in LA, had kept an apartment on the East coast that he was happy to rent to me, under the understanding that if he needed to he could sell it at anytime.

Summer of 2001, he decided he needed to.

This was highly stressful for me. Apts in the area were either total dumps or more money than I could afford. Plus my current apt had a lockbox, which meant real estate agents could tromp through there whenever they damned well felt like it. Those that know me well know that privacy is one of my biggest needs. The fact that my own home was no longer mine was doing a number on me. I wasn't sleeping well.

I remember I was up late the night before. I don't remember how late. Maybe 2, 3 in the morning. I don't remember what I was doing, but I know it had to involve complaining about the move, which was scheduled for the 15th of September, 2001.

I slept badly. I didn't have to go to work for some reason - possibly taking time off for the move - and didn't set my alarm. I finally came out of my room sometime after ten am.

My habit in the morning is to wake up, sit on my couch and snuggle with my cat for fifteen minutes to help him calm down over the fact that he was alone all night. I watch TV when I do this.

All the channels showed clouds.

I called my parents. They told me what happened. I became very calm - what I still call my "RA" mode, which is that my emotions get put in check so that I can use all my energy on my brain in a time of crisis - and told my parents I had to hang up now because I needed to find out if any of my friends were alive.

Mom and Dad were covering members of the family.

Older Brother and his wife, P, live in Brooklyn. OB works in Manhattan. P, who used to work at the UN, is now a stay at home mom. Their apt building has a view of the Towers, although not from their apartment. P found out about the planes because she heard a loud crash.

OB was in the city. With Colleen, who at the time was just over a year old. Normally she's at home, but P needed to do things that day that were hard with a baby so OB took advantage of his company's daycare and brought Colleen into the city with him.

My Aunt A also works and lives in the city. OB put her down as the emergency contact for Colleen. When he filled out the form that morning he wondered if he should call Aunt A to tell her. But then he figured why bother? What were the odds that Colleen would get sick and he'd be in a meeting at the same time?

OB got a message on his voice mail later that Colleen had been evacuated.

It was hours before my parents and I would know that OB, Colleen and Aunt A were all right, and had managed to find their way to Aunt A's midtown apartment.

Phones were down. Lines were jammed, and the Towers, in addition to housing 15% of Manhattan's business real estate, also had cell phone towers. Communication was impossible.

I didn't know about stakebait, miss_edith, buffybot or other friends who lived and worked in lower Manhattan.

I didn't know about friends of mine who worked in the Towers.

I was only able to contact versailles_rose on the phone to see if she was okay. She was safe, her family had close calls.

For some reason the Net worked. People could send emails when they couldn't use the phone. It was that way that I found out that some friends were alive, but many, many were still missing.

At some point I went over to my parents' house just a few miles away. Not because I needed them, but because they needed me. I was the only child of theirs that they could touch and see and know was all right. We watched CNN and checked email. We watched the footage come in of the planes hitting. We watched the Towers fall.

Friends and family that we hadn't spoken to in years called and emailed us to see if we were okay.

We felt the deaths of the firefighters and police officers, because had it been the right year, or right location, it would have been my uncles and cousins in there.

And you can't know. You can't know what it's like when this thing which is a part of you - which has been there for as long as you can remember (born just two years after me) isn't there anymore. When it's smoke and ash and people dying and the numbers are just Too Big. It's this big, unknowable thing. It's not even something unpredictable because who could predict it? If you lived near a mountain all your life could you predict that one day you'd wake up and the mountain wouldn't be there? That it could suddenly vanish? It's not unpredictable, it's unknowable. But it happened. And you can't even encompass this in your head. You can't even cry because it's so big.

Little things get you, like the planes. Like wondering what that death must have been like for them. Like the Pentagon.

Like the donations that start pouring in. Like seeing your country say back to you "Hey yeah, we do like you." And literally giving a part of themselves as all over people line up and give blood.

I really cry, finally, later that day when I get confirmations about OB and Colleen and Aunt A and stakebait and buffybot and miss_edith being okay, because no matter how much you tell yourself that they weren't at the Towers, just possibly near because of where they live/work/commute through, part of you still expected the worst and you cry not because you're sad but because you're happy. And it's the first time that day I get out of crisis mode and break down and sob. The hysterical kind, where you don't even have the emotions but your body has to ride the sobs out anyway.

But even then it's still not real.

Friends in the Towers are unaccounted for.

Cousin F, a New Jersey firefighter just like his dad (and son of Aunt A), goes in with his squad to work Ground Zero. He's got a wife at home, and they're expecting a kid.

OB and Colleen have to get home to P. They need to cross the Brooklyn Bridge in order to do this. They make it, but it's not easy.

And I can tell you now, even as I write this and sometimes cry, it's still not fully real to me.

Cousin F goes back home on Sept 12 - they're rotating the squads with all the volunteers. It's weeks before we find out if those who worked in the Towers are safe and sound.

The Friday after - I think it was the Friday after - I go to my parents' again to watch the service in DC because the power's out at my place. The radio plays "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" and I cry, because it's a New York song, by New York people.

The week after I go into Manhattan, because I need to make this real.

There's army in Grand Central Station. The papers of pictures saying "have you seen this person?" are as far up as Times Square - and I'm told by friends they go further still. I don't go to Ground Zero because I don't want to get in the way. Instead I meet up with stakebait after work, because her office is downtown enough that you can see the smoke from the fire that didn't go out until three and a half months later.

It's still not fully real.

In November a friend visits, and we go down to Ground Zero proper. I can feel the wrongness of the area long before I can see it. When I get there, I keep looking up.

The buildings are supposed to be there.

I force myself to look down - to see the wreckage, but it means nothing to me. I keep looking at the sky, at the nothing. I can't wrap my brain around it.

A plane flies overhead and my friend and I break down crying.

It's still not real.

***

And even now, a year later, it's still not real. I cross the Whitestone bridge to visit my grandmother/aunt/brother and I look to the skyline and I just feel like I'm not looking in the right place. The Towers aren't there - they must be somewhere. I don't get how they just go away. And I'd love to do some speech like Anya's about how the people in the Towers and the planes and the Pentagon will never have juice or laugh or cry or brush their hair, except I'm not even there yet. I'm still staring at the sky, stupidly, wondering where my mountains went. And even though I'm 27 I feel like I'm 3, wondering how somebody broke my sky. And why would anybody want to break my sky. It never hurt anybody.