ON THE BEACH

by M.J. Rose

Tod’s Point – Greenwich CT-. Sept 11, 2001

When you are jogging in this 147-acre park there is a spot you pass at the half way mark when you come around a bend and on a clear day – like today – you can see the whole gleaming skyline of Manhattan.

Except this morning there was something that seemed wrong.

There were two smokestacks on the horizon in a place there never had been smokes stacks before. And it took a minute – a long minute - to figure out that the smoke was billowing out from the World Trade Towers.

About twenty yards up ahead a few people had congregated and I stopped to ask what had happened.

Their news was swift and delivered in short sentences.

At that point in time both Towers were still standing. And so we stood. All strangers gathered on an outcropping of rock, watching a scene that did not make sense.

And then a woman ran up and began to climb those rocks. She was crying and her movements were frantic. She could not get close enough to their edge – to the water. She was in tears. A few steps behind her another woman followed who tried to keep the first from climbing down the rocks to the water.

"But he’s in that building," the crying woman said as she fought off her friend.

The crowd grew as the minutes passed. And some of us stood back to let the war widows past – you could tell who they were - the women and men who came - some alone, others with friends – who had loved ones in those two towers.

Ashamed to watch their grief, to see their trembling hands and smell their fear, I kept my eyes on the sky.

"It’s collapsing," a man shrieked. And the wailing started.

In this suburb that sits on the outskirts of NY we watched the Twin Towers fall. But we didn’t hear the sirens or the explosions. We only heard the gulls screaming and the widows weeping.

Postscript - Five days later:

Every morning this week I have gotten in my car to go walking. I say I am not going back to Tod’s Point - that I am going to the park where I cannot see the skyline - but I do go back. I have to go back and look again at the NY skyline.

The gaping hole is now as much as presence as the two towers once were and the phrase "a negative space" has never had as much meaning for me.

Just as I have to keep sending money to the Red Cross and I have to keep crying, I have to keep looking at that negative space.

And so I will go back every day to stand, look and for a moment honor all those people. The ones who are missing, the ones who worked the rescue, and the ones still living who will lose their lives some other day over what has been wrought.

 

*M.J. Rose made history when she self-published her suspense novel, LIP SERVICE, which then became the first Web-published book to be selected by the Doubleday Book Club. Her second novel is IN FIDELITY and she writes for Wired.com, Salon, Poets & Authors and Writer's Digest. M.J. has appeared on The Today Show, and was covered recently by Time Magazine. MJ Rose was born and raised in New York City.