At night her new habit is to lay out next to her bed a suitable outfit and her boots in case she has to run.
Aftermath of September 11th Until September 18 my younger daughter spared me knowing she was supposed to be at a press briefing at the World Trade Center, would have been taking the subway there—but for the fact her friend Helen was a houseguest, my daughter would have been at the World Trade Center when the terrorists' first hijacked plane struck which explains why I heard her voice tremulous during the first week after, when she phoned and phoned home. And from her work twenty blocks away from Ground Zero, my older daughter heard the first plane which she thought sounded too low, as if it were about to land at Burlington Airport, saw the second plane slice into the second tower, saw ”things” flying off and flames. After, she waited and waited with her small dance students, wondered whether adults would come for their children. Then she walked miles with crowds of walkers from the financial district to Queens, felt lucky she had sneakers. At night her new habit is to lay out next to her bed a suitable outfit and her boots in case she has to run—so she won't be caught wearing sandals like those women racing down hundreds of flights of tower stairs, and maybe she and her fiance will buy kayaks to paddle across the Hudson in another attack and his father can pick them up in New Jersey. Or a motorboat—how long would it take to go up the Hudson to take refuge in Hyde Park, Vermont?
Kathleen McKinley Harris
