Artifacts of Remembrance

In 1993, my train home from Boston one night got stuck on the tracks for several hours.  There was only one person on that train with a cell phone and she kindly let anyone who wanted, use it to call their loved one at home.  When a crisis strikes, our first thoughts are to get in touch with those who are dear to us.  I found out that the Smithsonian has a collection of handwritten notes and only a few old cell phones from some of the victims of 9/11.  Today we have a lot of ways to reach our family and friends but back in 1993 and 2001, our digital world was not so robust.

These poignant artifacts, now stored in one of the country’s most beloved museums, touched me very much.  I have some artifacts from that day too.  Four months before 9/11, I chaperoned my daughter’s 8th grade class to New York City.  I often think about the working women who chatted with us outside the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  The class peppered those somewhat raw but authentic New Yorkers with questions about what it was like to work in such a grand building and to live in such an exciting city.  They generously kept us enthralled before tucking inside the darkness of twirling doors to head back to offices in the sky.  I was able to snap a picture of them that day and  have  long wondered how they fared just a few months later on that terrible day.  They are with me still.

My brother and I along with my young child toured the World Trade Center together in the early 90’s.  He waited in the concourse with my daughter while I trawled through some of the many boutiques in the basement.  Before we hurried down an even lower level to catch the train out of the city, he bought me a holographic plaque of the trade center.  Prophetically, I noticed on the way home that when I held the plaque a certain way, the twin towers disappeared into a wavy mist of green and gold light.

I still have my small artifacts,  the picture of those nice New York ladies and a strange little plaque that unknown to me, foretold a story.

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Note:  Image above is my younger brother and my daughter in front of the World Trade Center.