Today is the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, and so I thought I would write about my visit to the memorial in Lower Manhattan on August 22, 2013:

I had no expectations or specific goal in going; I just thought I should visit the memorial as a sign of respect, to honor the dead and to remember that terrible, traumatic day that changed our country in so many ways, most of them bad.

The morning of August 22 was warm, humid, and rainy. I almost didn’t leave my hotel room because of the rain; an optimistic Californian, I hadn’t brought an umbrella along. However, I had a timed ticket and it was too much trouble to get another one. So I jumped on the 8th Avenue subway and when I emerged downtown, bought an umbrella for $5 from the first street vendor I saw.

As I walked over to the site, I remembered being in Manhattan in August 2001, just a few weeks before 9/11. We visited Dave’s sister and husband who live in a Soho loft. We were sitting out on their fire escape which had a great view of the World Trade Center. One of us said, “We should go take the elevator to the top.” And the other one said, “Oh, we can do that any time.”

The security to get into the site was brisk and efficient, much faster than the usual post 9/11 TSA airport lines. Eventually when the surrounding buildings are finished, the plaza will be open from all sides, and the security lines will vanish. So today’s security is because we’re entering a construction site, or so they say.

The memorial is a vast plaza planted with white swamp oaks and dominated by two square reflecting pools placed exactly where the two towers once stood. The pools are edged by short granite walls with the names of the victims inscribed on top in bronze. The names are not listed alphabetically. Instead, they’re grouped by where the victims were and who they were with. Flight AA 11, South Tower, the Pentagon, fire battalions, and so on. Families of the victim made requests to have names listed near each other to represent the friendships and relationships among lost colleagues. You can look names up on electronic terminals around the plaza.

When I got close to the north pool, I realized it’s not still water but four 30-foot waterfalls, one on each side. The waterfalls spill into flat pools, then the water disappears into a square hole in the middle….water vanishing into the abyss. I was surprised how loud and active the “reflecting” pools are, not quiet as befits reflection, but the movement of the water is actually very poignant.

The falling water evoked so many images and thoughts: the collapse of the towers on the very footprint where the pools now stand. All the lost lives disappearing into the ground. The endless grief, the water pouring out like a river of tears. The persistent flow reflecting our determination to remember and not forget. The relentless passage of time, washing away the memories.

And then the names, so many names, each one cut out in the metal to let air and water pass through. Many names had flowers stuck in them, usually white carnations, sometimes a leaf. Visitors had wiped  the rain off the bronze surrounding some names, creating small dry oases in the slick wet metal.

I went over to one of the onsite computers and looked up a Teradyne colleague who had died on American Airlines flight 11 from Boston to LAX. His name was Peter Hashem. He was an engineer and a refugee from the civil war in Lebanon in the 80s who had made a new life for himself in the Boston area.

Flight AA 11 was a popular flight for Teradyne employees headed to our facility in Agoura Hills, CA. Peter had planned to fly on Monday but delayed his trip until Tuesday in order to watch his son play in a soccer game. He was the only Teradyner on the flight that day because the company had a layoff going on, and most managers were in place to do the deed. I remember that the layoff was stopped as soon as it became clear our country had been attacked by terrorists.

It was shocking to see Peter’s face pop up on the computer screen, looking just as I’d remembered him. I expected to read a short bio, but there was nothing, just the location of his name on the memorial.

I found his name near the corner of the south reflecting pool. Three young boys clustered there, talking animatedly about baseball as they waited for their parents. To them, this place was just another ancient history site they’d been dragged to and didn’t really understand. The events of 9/11 could have been hundreds of years ago to them.

“Would you mind taking your conversation elsewhere?” I asked. I would have said more and explained that I needed some quiet to remember someone, but I didn’t trust my voice. Tears had been running down my face from the moment I stepped onto the plaza. I was grateful it was raining, and I could hide my face under my umbrella.

I wiped Peter’s name clear of rain with a damp tissue and wished I had something to stick into it, a flower, a leaf, anything. I touched his name and thought of him sitting up in first class, where’d upgraded like all good road warriors with miles. He was sitting with the terrorists, just minding his own business. Probably tapping away on his laptop and listening to music on Bose headset. I remembered him as best I could and silently sent him greetings wherever he is.

Next I visited the “survivor tree,” a pear tree originally planted on the World Trade Center plaza. It survived the attacks as a stump, was nursed back to health in a New York City park, and returned to the site. Now it looks perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened to it. Truthfully, it could be any pear tree. In any case, it makes a great backdrop for a photo. Lots of people posed in front of it, smiling as if at any fun tourist attraction.

My last stop was to the museum under construction. Along with others, I pressed my face against the glass wall and could see one of the giant steel columns they call “tridents.” Relics of the North Tower, they looked so familiar from photos and TV that they almost looked fake in real life.


As I headed to the exit, I took the time to tilt my head back and look up and out. All around the site, new towers are rising, true phoenixes from the ashes. The sounds of construction are unmistakable–drilling, grinding, hammering– but strangely comforting. It seems right to have both sides of grief and loss present here: to remember and to move on, to respect and to rebuild.


I found myself reluctant to leave, although I’d seen everything there was to see. Maybe I was waiting for some final answer, even though I was well aware there wasn’t one. I was looking at a neighboring tower when an airliner flew by, an ominous sight from this vantage point. Then it was gone, and it was time to leave.

Although the attacks that day have receded into the past and are now part of history, the day itself still seems perennially present, like the weather, or a bad song stuck in my head.

It’s not simply that I recall the details of that day so vividly when prompted. It’s more that the events of that day, and the ongoing aftermath, have become a part of me, like a chronic illness that I will never recover from or a wound that won’t heal.

I feel that we Americans haven’t healed from 9/11, and I doubt we ever will. We’ve just staggered along into the future, carrying the baggage of that day with us.