flag-liberty-ferryboatAlready at 11:00 AM on Friday, Fifth Avenue traffic at 85th Street is backed up all the way from mid-town. “Security checks,” a doorman says.

In the crush of traffic, the buses aren’t moving so I start walking to midtown, picking up as I go scores of other New Yorkers whose legs today are faster than wheels. So many walkers like that day ten years and two days ago when our worlds stopped along with public transportation. On the bus to work that morning of 9/11, as smoke blackened the downtown sky, we shared information from cell phones and radios. When a woman across the aisle announced that a second plane had just crashed into the towers, I thought she had somehow gotten incorrect information – heard a rumor, a piece of hearsay, had an hysterical moment – or maybe she was just plain bonkers because two planes smashing into two towers was beyond imagination – miles beyond belief.

But at work I watched the first tower fall and a charcoal mountain of smoke and ashes erupt over fleeing bystanders. Saw too people falling from incredible heights where I had once stood and marveled at distant vistas.

Released from work where no one was working, I walked home dazed, on disaster overload. The streets were thick with fellow New Yorkers returning home under their own power. The only sounds were our muffled footsteps. Cocooned in shock, no one spoke to anyone.

Brought up in a practical household to be prepared for things like hurricanes and floods, I stopped at Gristede’s to pick up some candles and water. On that day at that hour when our president had jumped into an airplane and was silently flying who knew where, it was impossible to guess what other horror – if any –was going to happen next. The store was jammed with harried shoppers. Even the manager was manning a cash register.  After picking up my few items, I stood in line surprised at how much food and stuff people were buying. Could it be I wasn’t being pessimistic enough here?

Then I noticed a basket unlike all the others. In it were piled Pepperidge Farm cookies. Packages and packages of them, every flavor known to mankind it seemed was in that basket.  Yes, I thought, If this was the end of our world, why not?  If they were coming to get the rest of New York tonight, this woman was going down the tubes happy, she was going down eating cookies…

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