Nine Eleven at a Distance
2800 East Pershing Boulevard, Cheyenne WY 82001
Where I was on 9/11
was a long way from
1 and 2 World Trade Center, New York, NY, 10048.
East High School—Tower 1 and Tower 2.
Kids whose parents used to jeer antisemitic things
about New York in particular,
and everything east of the Mississippi in general,
started wearing “I heart NYC” shirts,
and saying, “We’re all New Yorkers Now.”
The first combat death, Specialist Jonn Edmunds, went
to East High.
The national media swarmed before we even knew Jonn
was dead.
We kids misdirected them,
so his cousin could have some distance,
before the forced public mourning and chatting:
“How does it feel knowing Jonn was a hero?”
All the boys in my neighborhood crowded around
the recruitment office at Frontier Mall.
“We’ll fight them over there,
so we don’t have to fight them over here.”
--
I led my first worship service as a Pastor at St.
Stephen, South Plainfield
on the 10th anniversary.
Moving to Jersey, I became a tourist to the attack.
What had been distant came up close.
“I missed my train that day.”
“Washington Rock, that’s where we watched the smoke
from.”
“I knew it couldn’t have been an accident, so I told
the team to get out,
even though the boss ordered us to stay put.”
“I was working at a daycare.
We waited for the commuter parents to come and pick up
their kids.
We were so thankful they all made it back, eventually.”
--
A couple wars later: high school friends dead, morally
injured, jaded beyond belief.
Yet others made a life for themselves, and are doing well
—they have kids graduating high school and going off
to college now.
Those who first ran in to help,
and those who followed up later to relieve them,
breathing ungodly dust, sickened and struggling in all
sorts of ways.
New York is a different place now,
it has churned through a couple eras since then.
The distance of time, 25 years.
The distance of space, Wyoming to Jersey
—even New Jersey is decidedly not New York,
despite what they may tell you.
The distance is no distance,
and so very far away.
