 | | |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Personal Reflections (Oct. 8, 2001)I was riding in a car with my twin brother and his wife when we first heard that September 11 morning radio news flash that a plane had struck one of the Twin World Trade Center Towers in New York City. Moments later the three of us heard a live radio interview with a New York City resident who described in vivid details the witnessing of the second Twin Tower being hit by another commercial jetliner. Later that morning, my twin and I joined our co-workers in stunned silence around an office television, first watching the flames and smoke of the building's fires and then seeing the horrible moments when each weakened Twin Tower pancaked down to the ground. A month after these horrific events, I wanted to reflect on what these buildings meant to me personally and to help keep the memories alive of some of the victims of this horrible act of terrorism. As initial confusion by our nation and world over the accidents first spread to fear than to anger than to strengthened resolve, I find myself recalling my personal memories of seeing and visiting the Twin Towers. And as I jot down my thoughts on the buildings, I realize that many of my personal experiences also involve my family, which for me mostly means my twin, my wife and her twin, and now my twin sons.
As I learn more about some of the victims of the building's collapses, I find myself paying particular attention to the men and women who shared the same bond that I have-of being a twin or the parent of multiples. As one young twin (a girl in Connecticut of about 9 or 10) remarked in an interview I read, "I felt bad because I'm a twin just like the buildings were. And I don't know what I would do if I lost my twin." So while all the stories of loss and heroism are significant, I find myself thinking about heroes such as the twin firefighters who were at Ground Zero at the time of the building's collapses with one perishing and one surviving. I think about the moms and dads of young twins and triplets who died in the fire or building collapses. I mourn for the adult men and women who leave behind their twins with some of these victims just having time enough to say goodbye to their twins before phone lines went dead. And I think of the buildings themselves, forever entwined with each other as both physical and even emotional monuments. Twin structures that were both built and fell together. Identical twins from birth to death. --> On to Personal Memories <-- |
