Memories of
20 years ago, planes struck the Twin Towers and left us
S
by
Michael Hallisey
wedish molecular biologist Dr. Jonas Frisen found that the cellular structure that makes our physical selves, systematically dies and regenerates itself in totality every seven years. Which, in the most literal sense, means we are not who we were a decade ago.
Life is not as it was 20 years ago.
Like Frisen’s study of carbon-14’s imprint on the human body, the events surrounding Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 created a timestamp upon the collection of generations who walk among us today. The sense of innocence that was lost to those who lived through the day was never a reality to the children who came after. My son Liam came into this world just shy of two years after the day. As I write this, he’s six days away from attending his first year of college. Between those two milestones, he has developed a love for videogames like his father. He is proficient at first-person shooters like Call of Duty. The storylines captured in these games keeps a player’s attention by adapting real world headlines into the plotline. It represents the world theater he has always known. His first memory of 9/11 was visiting the exhibit at the State Museum. His mother and I had spoken to him about it before, but our words failed to capture the gravity of the day. He later said he had understood the facts but didn’t comprehend the scale of it all until he saw the crumpled heap of the FDNY pumper Engine 6. In school, the details shared to him and his friends progressed as they grew older. In high school they watched videos. They learned who died. They saw “the jumpers.” Twenty years ago, his mother and I were preparing to marry. I retired from a brief newspaper career and fell into a corporate job as a financial representative. It was a new endeavor for the insurance company, too, as it was delving into variable annuities whose performance was tied to the ebbs and flows of New York’s Wall Street. My job was to process new account paperwork and answer remedial questions from agents who made nearly eight times my salary. Our team’s timesheet sat on top of a gray filing cabinet outside of our row of forest green cubicles. In the second box to the right of my name, I remember writing in “8:45.” Within minutes of sitting down, Melissa, a teammate, said aloud that a plane hit one of the Twin Towers. We chuckled and asked what kind. She didn’t know. Moments later, someone else shared that it was a 767. “That can’t be right,” I said. Then a cold chill went down my back. I would later see a video of an incredulous Bryant Gumbel taking a phone call from a witness on a CBS broadcast of “The Early Show.” How he attempted to correct the caller’s own observation, telling him it had to be a prop plane. No, the caller said, it was a jet. “That would have to mean it was hijacked,” I said. The Twin Towers stood toward the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City’s financial district. When I was 9 years old, my family and I rode the elevator up the South Tower and stood on top of the build-
14 Family Now — September 2021
The scale of the tragedy that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, is sometimes hard for y twisted beam damaged during the terrorist attacks. ing. The 107th floor underneath had an observation deck from which my cousin and I peered through binoculars down at the people walking across the plaza. Phones continued to ring with agents asking questions. We were going about our day until we learned of another plane. We stopped, stunned. I was processing my thoughts, explaining to myself that the first plane could be excused as an accident, but that the second was something else. I just couldn’t process that something else. The inability to connect the events to a plausible conclusion produced fear. I looked at Jackie, who sat next to me and asked, “What in the hell is going on?” I made another feeble attempt to work by calling our sales support desk. I needed to address the paperwork in front of me. The voice on the other end asked, “You’re not calling out, are you?” I just said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” In our efforts to grasp a hold of our everyday, we
