A Glimpse of the Divine

Little sweetheart, today is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I didn’t think you and I ever really talked about that day. It wasn’t until I was talking to your mom just now that I knew you had actually been home in Davis, not in England at school that morning and had to wait over a week to return to Oxford after.

It was such a strange day, here, little sweetheart, to say the least. I myself was just back from London having been there from Memorial Day through Labor Day. I’d barely readjusted to the time difference and was actually sleeping when the first plane hit. I infamously didn’t have a tv in those days and when a friend called to wake me up, she told me to turn on my radio. I still had a landline, then, which was good because the cell signals were jammed and you couldn’t get through. The subway shut down and eventually so too did the buses but not before the few that made it here uptown were crammed full people seemingly hanging off them like a scene out of Gandhi. All day long people covered in dust made their way on foot up the West Side Highway and 12th Avenue.

No one knew what to do. I walked over to another friend’s apartment - a normal person who actually had a television - and we just stood there watching. We got the idea that maybe we could donate blood, maybe they’d need that, so we walked up to the old St Clare’s Hospital (not there anymore) on 9th but the whole block was cordoned off by police, awaiting injured survivors who never arrived.

The bridges were closed but somehow our friend Paul got in from the outer boroughs to open up McCoy’s because he thought people should have a place to go. It was something you and I knew from our time in England - and later when I finally got to take you to Ireland, too - about how pubs are something different from bars. They’re public houses and especially out in the countryside a community gathering place. “The pub is the hub” Prince Charles famously said.

A score of us trickled in, watching the coverage and speaking in disbelief to one another into the night.

It was a few years before you found me, little sweetheart, although you would move to New York, briefly, for a year, and live just blocks down the street. Later, this place, this place from where I write this, became (and remains) your home, too. Somehow the memory of this day is intertwined with thoughts of you. Certainly great loss is a commonality but I think a larger thing, a spiritual presence, is the true linkage.

When unimaginable things happen, somehow, I think, we’re closer to the divine. We can sense, can feel its presence, almost know it. Today, I feel so close to you, little sweetheart. I know you’re near and encouraging me to carry on - with our work, with striving to be a better person each day, and to hear you calling. I will listen. Always. With all my love forever.