A 9/11 Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there lived a young woman with a warm smile and a sad heart.  She had grown up before her time and when the full weight of her past became too heavy to bear, she gave up her dreams to lighten her load. 

One night, alone in her home she set sail into the vast expanses of the world wide web on the great search for her future.  Click, click, click went the mouse.  Tap, tap, tap went the keys as she searched into the night.  Suddenly, she found it.  A posting for an opportunity that she knew was meant for her.  So she summoned up all of her courage and attempted to summarize her humble set of experiences into a neat and colorful document and tucked it away into an envelope that lay on her desk until...  

Monday 

Monday came and she clutched the envelope, made a wish and sent it on its way all the way to New York City where she hoped it would fall into the hands of someone who was as curious to meet her as she was desperate to leave.

And then...

The phone call came.

Lisa was her name.  Mike was his name.  We found you, they said, and just in time.  Words tumbled out as the young woman listened with the most authentic excitement she had ever felt.  We found you.  We just lost someone.  We need one more.  May we speak to you again?  Interviews were arranged.  Sitting on her mother's bed, she poured her heart out to these strangers.  She made them laugh, she made her case.  With every word was an invisible plea- choose me!  I am meant for this!  I am who you have been looking for.  In the end came the promise to call again the following day.  Good bye.  Click.  Waiting.

Before the young woman could let her doubt enshroud her, the ringing came.  The phone called out, it's time!  It's time!  We talked it over, we think you're the one.  Can you make the journey to New York City at the end of the month?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, 1,000 times yes.

Two weeks to find her way there.  Two short weeks standing between her and her future.  Phone calls were made, emails were sent.  Is there someone, anyone who can lend me their home for just a little while?  When it seemed all but lost, the offer came.

There was a young man whose mother was a friend to the young woman's mother.  This particular young man was in the City pursuing his own dreams which, as it turned out, were taking him away from home for just a few months.  And, as it turned out, they were the same months that the young woman was desperate for a home.

A flurry of activity.  Classes to postpone to spring, friends to notify, family to celebrate with.  Just a few more days until the day that the young woman and her mother were to set out in a little truck packed with all the young woman's treasures to drive to the city.

September 10th.  How lucky that the young woman's mother was set to attend a conference in New York City on September 11th.  How fortunate that she could drive her daughter to the City the day before and fly back home with her coworkers.  How did God create so  many miracles leading up to this day?  How was He able to pluck this young woman out and look so favorably on her?

September 10th, 2001 was a glorious day.  Blue and green and warm and lovely.  The young man with whom the young woman had spent too many of her precious years with was kissed goodbye with all the assurances that they would meet again soon.  Somewhere in the deepest corner of her heart she knew that this was not to be.

The young woman and her mother journeyed all day and into the night.  And then they saw the lights.  Look, look, her mother exclaimed!  There they are!  As they rounded the bend in a hilly stretch of highway they came face to face with two gleaming, glowing towers.  Twin towers.  There they stood welcoming them into the City.  Beckoning to them to keep going, don't stop now.  The women drew closer and closer into the city, over the bridge and nearing the tunnel that would take them home.  The young woman rolled down her window and looked up.  The wind from this new place whipped her hair around as she said hello to the Twin Towers.  I'm here!  I'm home!  How could she have know that this hello was also her goodbye?

September 11th came like any other day.  The sun came up and the birds gathered in the tree outside of the young woman's new home.  The alarm went off and went ignored.  The weary travelers rested and dreamed, unaware of the nightmare that was unfolding just north of them.  When they gathered the strength to rise and depart, a cab was hailed and a request was made.  Take us to Manhattan please.  No.  Not possible.  A plane has hit the towers.  Bridges have been closed.

A plane has hit the towers.  How peculiar thought the young woman.  And then the phone calls came in.  Are you safe?  Where are you?  What's happening?  The young woman and her mother looked at each other, puzzled and scared.  When they turned on the television to see what was happening to their beloved City, the images were too incredible to believe.  The two happy gatekeepers who had greeted the travelers less than 12 hours ago were on fire.  Smoke was billowing from their highest heights.  The young woman could not contain her grief.  She felt herself bobbing in an ocean of sadness.  My City, she cried.  My City!  How could someone do this to my City?  And then, blackness.  The television went black.  The young woman and her mother turned to the radio in time to hear the mayor of the City rushing down the street narrating what he was seeing.  Bodies were falling from the towers.  The screams of the people nearby were vivid and horrifying.  The blue clear sky outside created a stunning and awful contradiction to the nightmare that was unfolding beneath it.

And then, they were gone.  Vanished into the dust.  Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, children, friends, neighbors, dead.  In the face of this realization, the young woman and her mother went outside to walk and attempt to process the events of the day.  Looking up in the sky, debris and dust billowed above swirling around in the glorious late summer sky.  A cruel paradox.

The young woman and her mother stumbled into a restaurant.  George's.  The silence was deafening.  All eyes were focused on televisions filled with people trying somehow to make sense of the nonsensical, to find logic in the illogical, to find hope in the hopeless.  She was forced to make a choice.  No one would blame her for returning home.  Such a tragedy, so much sadness and uncertainty.  No one would blame her at all for leaving.

Days passed and they explored this new neighborhood together.  The young woman felt no fear.  An evening spent sitting on the front stoop revealed her mother's long ago dream of living in such a place.  Now they shared this moment together.  Little phoenixes determined to rise from the ashes of this fire.  On the morning of her mother's departure, the sky had opened up and the rain came.  A more appropriate atmosphere for the day's events than days before.  They hugged and kissed and cried as the young woman bid her mother farewell and safe travels she made the long journey home alone.

And the young woman stayed in the City and she loved the City.  She saw the aftermath of that day everywhere she went.  Posters hung bearing smiling faces with the words, Have you seen me? and Missing since 9/11.  She saw the City band together and dig each other out.  And every day that her train crossed the bridge she looked out the window at the hole left by mad men.  It was a daily reminder of how fragile life is; how fragile we all are.

And she made some changes in her life to honor all the people whose lives ended that day.  She said good bye to the young man.  She picked her dreams back up and laid down her fear.  She vowed to return home a changed woman who would honor her City and the people lost through her new life.  And that is exactly what she did.

Ten years passed and the young woman was older now.  She never made it back to the City to live.  She made her home in the same place she was so desperate to leave.  But she was healthier now, more alive.  And in that city she found love, she found friendship, she found new dreams.  She married her soulmate and had a son; a bright, beautiful symbol of new hope and new chances.  

But there was one thing she didn't find in this city.  She didn't find herself.  For she had found herself long ago in the wake of an unthinkable tragedy.  She made her life a fairy tale written by God's own hand.  And someday, her baby will hear the story of September 11th and how that young woman became his mother.  It will not be a paragraph in his history book, it will be part of the fabric of his family history; part of his reason for being.  For on that day so many years ago, his mother stopped existing and started living.

~The End~