Remembrance
©2001, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

I first saw it under construction, but I don't remember much. I was very much under construction too, in my boyhood home of Jersey City. What preceded it was called "Hudson Terminal" on the PATH train that dove under the Hudson River from New Jersey, and although I was taken through that station at least once, I have no real memory of it. When we went into the City, we usually went uptown, since that's where my father worked. Though right across the river, Manhattan was still a faraway place for me. Once it was completed, I remember only a few glimpses of it from Exchange Place. Then, we moved to the suburbs, and it wasn't in sight all the time.

I didn't actually visit it, and go to the top, until I was in high school. It was Freshman year and our teacher was pretty enlightened about these things, and our student teacher was more than that—she was "with it." If the administration knew what really happened on that trip, they'd probably have had several kittens, but rule-conformist that I was, I wasn't responsible for any of the trouble.

In fact, I was too worried about whether I'd get sick on the elevator. All of the ones I'd been on before might have taken me to the 10th floor at most, maybe not even that high, and the numbers on the display calmly incremented one at a time. Not this elevator; it counted in tens. Ten floors per throw and it still took eleven increments and the whole left-to-right display over the door to count off from zero to the destination. When the class trip emptied out, I was probably the last one off, and I know I was hesitant to come close to the edge of the platform, even though it was fully lined with strong glass. At least I'd hoped it was. And that was on the inside, one floor below the very top. It took me quite a while to find the courage to ascend that last escalator. When I did, it took my breath away, of course. Most of the class was much more interested in the northward looking view, or the eastward looking view. But I looked west, over Jersey City, over the place I called my home town. I was significantly less nervous on the way down; first because I knew I was going down, and second because I made it a point to leave a little early so that I wouldn't be with anyone in front of whom I would have been embarrassed if I did get elevator-sick.

The next time I remember being there, I was past my college days, and I was with the young lady who was my first real love. Having shed some of my rule-conformity for wings of wanderlust, I had whisked her there on a lark because I knew it was a sparkling clear night and the view would be unmatched. It was nighttime, and it was romantic, and it was beautiful, and so was she. And so was the city and the pearl strings of the bridges and the millions of lights in the hundreds of buildings, stretching as far as the eye could see and beyond. I looked in all directions that night, and especially to the east that night; and I did better, I took pictures even though I was not sure they would come out. But one did come out, so well in fact that I had an enlargement made, and then put away for safekeeping.

And it has come to be the only picture I took and still have of the view from the top. As nice as it is, it is easily eclipsed by one my father took from across the river; in which the Woolworth Building, itself a marvel of an earlier age, is framed perfectly by two seemingly indestructible towers of steel and glass.

There were probably other trips in between, probably taken in some fair degree of sorrow and solitude, after the magic of my first love disappeared. But the next one I remember was with the woman who is now my wife, and again, on a date early in a romantic courtship. She had several paperback books for me, as a gift. We couldn't stop conversing. I talked about John Steinbeck and William Least Heat Moon, and travelling just because you can and because there is a view to be viewed, and she talked about Spalding Gray and Broadway and especially Jane Austen. And we both admired the view that was to be viewed. All four sides again, but I showed off my home town and where I lived. I wanted to share it with my date, because I had begun to sense that she could become my partner, and I was right. We stayed most of the time on the lower level, enclosed and safe from the wind; we only briefly ventured to the upper level, just to ensure that we'd done that together.

Meanwhile, there were countless trips on the PATH train, for business and pleasure, and during graduate school, for a summer job located a short walk away from the PATH station. Then, the move I had made away from the homes in which I was raised became more permanent, and more distant. My wife and I became a family, away from the City, but never really seperated from it.

The final time I was on the grounds was December 2000, as part of a Christmas present of a trip to my family in which we sought out the landmarks featured in the "Rhapsody in Blue" segment of the film Fantasia 2000. My children and my wife and I were at the tail end of this whirlwind tour of the island, and we came to the base and discussed whether to take the kids to the top. My best friend, Kieran's godfather, who worked in the vicinity, was with us. When we saw how long the line was to go to the Observation Deck, we calculated that there would not be enough time to get everyone up there and give the view any kind of justice. Both my best friend and my wife knew me well enough to know I would constantly be checking my watch, wondering whether we would make our return flight. So we opted for a snack and drink at one of the concessions across the street instead. Then we hailed a cab from the adjoining street and made our way to the airport, waving goodbye to the Twin Towers. We would be back, I promised.

As I write this, I do know that in some way, we will all be back, because in a sense, though the World Trade Center is gone, and thousands of lives with it, we have never left. We will never forget September 11, 2001, but the fond memories will return someday as well. There may never again be complete peace in our souls, but there will be remembrance.

In memory of all of the victims of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the other senseless events of September 11, 2001, some of whom I knew, all of whom we grieve for.