Tuesday, February 28, 2012

On Ground Zero


One of the cool things about going to school in New Jersey is that I am only an hour's train ride away from New York City.  Growing up in northern Indiana, Chicago was the nearest big city, and it is one I still love.  I got to visit LA once, which was fun, but kind of a weird place--so laid back that I don't know how they ever manage to film tv shows on schedule there.  I've even gotten to see London and Paris and Rome.  But none of these big cities is anything like the sprawling monstrosity that is New York.  I've only been up a few times, but it has been delightful to play tourist and explore the city. 

My most recent visit was this weekend.  My sister is on Spring Break, so my mom took some time of work, and they came out to New Jersey to visit.  We did a whirlwind tour of as much of the city as we could.  One of the places that we determined to visit was Ground Zero, the memorial at the site of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers

There is a security checkpoint before you can see the memorial--not quite as strict as an airport, though still reminiscent:  the x-ray's and metal detectors, those typical grey bins for everything in your pockets.  It was kind of eerie to experience a security check while thinking about how the attacks were carried out.

The memorial itself was all very well-done.  The grounds are very simple, but all with the same motif of towers and squares evoking the images that had defined the World Trade Center towers.  There are square blocks that serve as seats and long narrow paths to evoke the towers.  The lamp posts in the grounds are shaped like towers.  There are rows of trees planted, all surrounded by a paved square with a smaller square cut out for the trunk, kind of evoking the pools that are main part of the memorial.  There was a pear tree planted there that had survived under the rubble, been transplanted to Brooklyn where it "recovered," and then replanted at the site.  The first buds were just starting to come out on the branches.  It was all very well- thought out.

Then there were the pools.  They are massive.  But large as those cavernous mouths are, it is mind blowing to think that the towers that had stood there were even larger and impossibly high above it.  You can get lost watching the ceaselessly flowing water.  It is like watching fire or a waterfall.  I though about how many tears must have been shed because of the attack and how many are still being shed--how it changed our country, our society, and our world.  It is as though the earth itself is grieving because of all the pain the attacks brought about. 

At the bottom of the pools are holes into which the water is flowing.  They are haunting.  Always open.  Always dark.  Always swallowing up water.  In some ways, it is comforting:  the grief can flow away.  But in another sense it is bottomless.  There is no end.  And there is still a feeling that the land has been scarred; it is an open wound that still shows in the ground.  But in spite of that it is still majestic, stately, beautiful even in its way.  It pulls you in.

And around each pool, they have the names of all the victims engraved.  So many names, and all of them had a story.  There was one spot where I saw two people, a man and a woman with the same last name, and I couldn't help wondering if they were related, and how.  Husband and wife?  Mother and son?  Siblings?  Every so often there would be a flower over the names usually a white rose--someone nearby must have been selling them.  A couple of them were pushed into the names so that the roses stood up--a simple token, but very moving.  I also saw someone making a rubbing of a name.  I had to wonder, looking around, how many of these people were like me, tourists just taking in this piece of history, and how many knew or loved someone who had died there?

Before we left, my mom, my sister, and I huddled together to pray for families of people who had died.  It was all a very heavy experience.