09/10/01

The date I’m writing this, 9/11, has become a kind of shorthand in our culture, an annotation for that murderous instant when history seemed to shift. Here in Manhattan, where most of the carnage occurred, the day is indelible. I will never forget looking out the windows of the GUIDEPOSTS offices and seeing the plumes of smoke curling improbably into a perfect blue sky 50 blocks south. But oddly, seven years later it is September 10th that has stayed with me almost as much, even more, perhaps. 

Like the infamous day that would follow, September 10 was beautiful. The city was back at full-strength after August, when the ranks of New Yorkers are depleted by mass vacations. The pennant races were on, important enough to dominate the front pages of the tabloids, a particularly guilty pleasure of mine. I met a friend for lunch. We complained that the restaurant was out of the crab cakes that we had come there for and felt a little cheated. The last thing I did at work that day was make plane reservations for a business trip the following week. I didn’t give it a second thought. Why should I?

I remember coming home that night to an empty apartment. Julee and the dogs were upstate. I missed them but it was nice to know I’d sleep in a little in the morning instead of getting up to walk Marty and Sally. I fell asleep on the couch watching Monday Night Football (the Giants were losing to the Broncos) after making it about halfway through a container of Chinese food.       

Why do I remember this unremarkable day with such trivial specificity? Why do I remember the waiter’s helpless shrug when he announced that there were no more crab cakes? Maybe the sheer ordinariness of that Monday cast in high relief against what was to follow makes it so unforgettable for me, not so much as a study in before-and-after but as a reminder of how quickly and unforeseeably and irrevocably a familiar world can change at any time. Even more than the violence of the 11th the uncertainty of the 10th haunts me. 

What I try to remember is this: There is a God who lives in the moment with us—today, tomorrow and forever. Nothing else can be predicted save for this absolute certainty, and that is what faith is—a belief in the one true constant that will see us through no matter how unexpectedly life changes.    
 

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.