I was a senior at New York University in September of 2001, contemplating a trip to Paris at the beginning of the fall semester. A high-end designer invited me to translate for Fashion Week — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use my French speaking skills. I’d have to miss the first week of school, but it was worth it. I could skip the sessions about syllabi and class protocols. My flight home was scheduled for September 12, 2001.
I watched the news with my co-worker in the Hôtel des Arts in Montmartre about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. We thought it was an accident, a horrible mistake by a rookie pilot. Then we watched the second plane hit in real time. My mind flattened, my body became dead weight. A curtain of dread descended over me — this was intentional.
New York was where my boyfriend lived, my brother and sister, all my friends, my beloved miniature schnauzer. The towers belched an endless stream of smoke, and I imagined everything I held dear dissipating into the sky. 56 minutes later, the South Tower collapsed. We watched without speaking, our breath jagged. 29 more minutes and the North Tower disintegrated to the ground. Our once-charming hotel room became a solemn tomb. We didn’t move or speak for four hours, our eyes laminated to the television.
All flights were cancelled, and I couldn’t get in touch with anyone. I’d call New York from my hotel room 3,628 miles away, crouched in a ball, tears streaming down my face. Every time, I’d pray the call would go through. Every time, the circuits were busy. For six hours, I kept trying, my fingers slipping over the buttons of the hotel phone by memory.
My co-workers left for the South of France and I was left alone in that hotel room in Montmartre. The charming neighborhood of crooked streets and cobblestone lanes became a prison, a maze I couldn’t extract myself from. I passed by the bistros where we’d had dinner nights before, chatting at sidewalk tables, watching the flâneurs amble until darkness came. That old life of chatting over cappuccinos and pain au chocolat felt like a dream, as if it hadn’t existed at all.
Now the streets were filled with crowds around televisions, Parisians’ eyes ringed with shock. Lines to buy newspapers snaked around corners. Garbage cans were sealed and “SOYONS ATTENTIFS ENSEMBLE!” blasted over the metro loudspeakers. Employees searched bags when you walked into stores. Armed guards paroled the streets.
I watched the footage over and over again, alone in my hotel room. I went to the airport thronged with people hungry to get home, lines and luggage carts in every direction. I was torn between my desire to be back and my chest-hollowing fear of boarding an airplane. But I couldn’t even get on a plane. Airports were closed, flights grounded.
During my third day of waiting at the airport a woman with short, blonde hair and sparkly lipstick saw me crying as she passed by. “Are you all right?” she asked. I shook my head no. She pressed my face to her shoulder and said in one long breath,“Please-Jesus-look-over-this-girl-let-her-fly-today-and-arrive-safely-home-please Jesus-hear-my-prayer-Jesus-keep-this-girl-Amen.” She walked away before I could say anything, my tears a darkened stain on her sweater. Her prayer ended up securing me a surprise boarding pass, but not a flight — JFK was still closed. What at first seemed like a miracle ended as another dashed hope.
Every night I’d return home from the airport to my foreign hotel bed, unsure of when I’d ever get out. I’d listen to planes roar overhead in the darkness. How were they flying, when all the airports were closed? I’d imagine World War III had broken out, or there was a battalion of planes set loose to fly into buildings. I’d imagine I’d die alone in that single room in Montmartre, never having seen my friends and family again. I dreamed of nuclear weapons, of my miniature schnauzer covered in ash. The roar of those planes became the soundtrack of my nightmares.
Eventually I made it home. I boarded a plane to Boston on September 15th, one of the first flights into a just-reopened Logan airport — the same airport the hijackers flew out of to destroy the World Trade Centers. We sat sticky with fear at take-off, completely silent as the engines screamed. We remained jittery throughout the flight but erupted into applause upon landing. I made my way from Boston to New York. I hugged my boyfriend, cried with my siblings, drank with my friends. I cuddled my dog. But I couldn’t hear a plane in the sky without tensing up, my spine iced rigid with fear.
Two decades later, I thought I’d lost my fear of planes. I’ve flown around the country and been near countless airports, not giving the sound of flight a second thought. But now, with helicopters flying low to inspect power lines for the threat of wildfire, it all comes surging back. How will I protect my child, who has nightmares about fire and who asks “how many Coronas” I’ve lived through? How can I ensure that both my daughters live in a world filled with honeybees and elephants and rainforests? How can I guarantee they will have smoke-free skies and plastic-free oceans, lush rolling hills and intact glaciers? It all feels beyond my reach.
We have come so far, yet learned so little. But what I have now is this moment, the desire to make things better for my children. That is a lot — perhaps it is even enough.