Here’s an excerpt on an interview I did with my mom.<\/p>\n
In 2001 my dad worked for Cantor-Fitzgerald in E-Trading. They had just opened a new firm in Houston, Texas, so he moved his family there, and commuted from Texas to New York every week.<\/p>\n
On September 11, 2001, my dad was supposed to be working at World Trade I. Instead, he was in Houston because my mom had an appointment to see about trying to have a third child, me, after having surgery. 658 out of 960 Cantor-Fitzgerald workers lost their lives when World Trade I fell that day, making it the firm with the most casualties that day.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to 2019, I\u2019m sitting alone face-to-face with my mother on her bed. She has some reality show paused, one of the Real Housewives spin-offs. Our fourteen-year old yorkie, Libby, is laying off to the side of Mom.<\/p>\n
I start the voice recording, and in the back of my mind, I feel like I already know what she is going to say. I\u2019ve heard most of the story since birth, mostly from my mom. However, after getting past some of the key details; what was dad\u2019s job, where were you when it happened, what was your initial reaction, etc., I asked,<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you tell Hannah and Conor?\u201d<\/p>\n
I already sort of knew the answer, so when she replied with,\u00a0\u201c\u2026I went to see a child psychologist, and she said to explain to Conor and Hannah what happened, just say that some bad men hit Daddy\u2019s work, but Daddy wasn\u2019t there, Daddy\u2019s in Houston, and to offer to let them watch it one time, but then turn everything off, no newspapers. Because they would see it as happening over and over again.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t surprised. I then asked her,\u00a0\u201cDid she ask any questions when you told her?\u201d<\/p>\n
For the first time, my mom thought for a second rather than spitting out an answer she seemed to have recited a thousand times.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe did. She would ask em\u2019 like intermittently throughout the next month or so. We had been to World Trade I to visit her dad a few months before and the man in the deli on floor\u00a0105 gave her one of those suckers that\u2019s like a pinwheel sucker, and he told her that he had thirteen kids. And she thought that was so funny, so later that night she came down and asked me,\u00a0 \u201cDid the man with thirteen kids that gave me the sucker die.\u201d And I had to say, \u201cYes, I\u2019m afraid he did.\u201d And then she asked, your dad\u2019s secretary was nine months pregnant, with a little boy, and she asked me if she died, and if the little boy died, and I had to say yes. So, ya\u2019 know she would just come up and just ask those kinds of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was shocked. She had never mentioned that before. I prior knew about my dad\u2019s pregnant secretary that had died, but mom had never been that open about something so raw. What surprised me even more, is that my dad had mentioned that same man weeks before when we were talking. We were driving to my grandparents\u2019 house in Houston, the radio was softly playing, and I had briefly mentioned something about how it must have been awful to lose so many friends. He turned to me and said,<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost a lot of friends, yes, but it\u2019s not even just that. It would be the people you saw at the deli, like the man serving you. It\u2019s the people you see just for a fleeting moment that seem to disappear. \u201c<\/p>\n
Hearing my mom mention the man with thirteen kids brought me back to that same conversation. I however did not interrupt, and just let her continue telling the rest of the day, the man with the thirteen kids still on my mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s an excerpt on an interview I did with my mom. In 2001 my dad worked for Cantor-Fitzgerald in E-Trading. They had just opened a new firm in Houston, Texas, so he moved his family there, and commuted from Texas to New York every week. On September 11, 2001, my dad was supposed to be … Continue reading “Fleeting”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5749,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions\/5749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}