One of Guy's aunts used to live on Long Island, and when Joseph was about 2, we went to visit. Their home was our base for a long weekend in New York. We had a wonderful time visiting with them, touring Yankee stadium, riding the subway trains, and enjoying a free performing arts festival at Lincoln Center. But there was one thing that made the trip truly unforgettable and different from any other trip I've made to the City.
One of the things I insisted on was to take the Staten Island Ferry and see Battery Park. On our last day, we left early, drove all the way around to Staten Island and rode in on the water. We did some of the usual park things: watched performers, had a 'name' painted by a street artist, perused the merchandise. Then we walked up to Ground Zero.
As we approached, there was still a silence, a reverence in the area; memorial flowers, notes and ribbons fluttered in the fence. At first, we were a little surprised that the fence was so high and the portholes through it so few, but the closer we got, the harder it was to focus through our tears, through the collective conscienceness' pain that still hung in the air. It was more than a little disconcerting to see the mess, the rubble and cracked pavement that could still be seen; and yet a little church across the street was unscathed. We were a somewhat somber group heading back to the ferry to go home. It's hard to be lost in thought for long with a toddler and 3 other young children while visiting an unfamiliar city, though.
Back on the Ferry, I sat on a bench and watched Guy with the boys, lifting them one at a time to the rail to get a better look, and eventually putting Joseph on his shoulders. I tried not to be too nervous about the whole scene before me, since I was tired and glad for the break. A woman sitting next to me asked if they were all mine. "All five," I answered, with a smile, and that warm feeling of mingled pride and admiration at our family. "It's so nice to see families come to the City again," she remarked. Until that point, I had not even considered that she was from the area.
Raised in Upstate New York, I had always heard adjectives ranging from "standoffish and aloof" to "downright unfriendly" used to describe New Yorkers (what we called those from the City). Living in Rhode Island, I had learned that city folks could be a bit bristly, but, in all reality, the city people I'd been in contact with were simply people--busy people with someplace to go all the time, but people nonetheless. This woman was striking up a conversation with me, a total stranger--and obviously an out-of-towner at that. I turned my head to look at her and asked, "Have there been fewer visitors?" In reality, life in Pennsylvania had gone on since September 11th; tourism was moderately affected locally.
She told me that people had started to come back, but for a while--a long while--there were far fewer tourists. Something she noticed particularly on the Ferry. Then she told me about that day. She told me about the boats--hundreds of them--ferrying people from Manhattan to the shores of Staten Island. She told me about thousands of people, dusty, dirty, dazed, in shock, streaming off the boats. For hours. She told me, too, about the Staten Islanders greeting them all.
That was the part of the story that got to me. The part that made me proud to be listening to this woman I sat next to by chance. The part that made me feel an unexplained kinship to her. She told me that the citizens of Staten Island--at the docks at first to get a glimpse of what atrocities had happened across the harbor, like any red-blooded American rubbernecker--became the greeters. Like the Maine Troop Greeters of Bangor, ME, the members of this community gathered at the terminal with blankets, soup, coffee, fresh water, and, most importantly, open arms, shoulders to lean on, and a willingness to listen, to comfort, to cry. And they kept it up for the entire evacuation. Afterwards, many of the shopkeepers and innkeepers on the island offered rooms and goods to the people who didn't know where to go, or who couldn't get home. The Staten Islanders opened more than their arms that day; they opened their hearts wide. They made a difference. They did what needed to be done, without even thinking about how hard it might be, how dangerous, how frightening. They opened themselves, and they grew as a consequence.
I asked the woman if the tone in New York and on Staten Island had changed. She told me that there was a new respect for survival; a new feeling of oneness, if not family. She said there was obviously more generosity of spirit, and more willingness to make eye contact with strangers, and not the suspicious stare-down familiar on TV and in the movies. She said the City had become friendlier, more open, more inviting, without losing its identity. This was what she found most telling. The ability to learn something fundamental about the very depths of your being and still manage to stay who you are impressed her....and me. New York was still New York, only more so. What also impressed me was how humble she was. According to Boatlift, a film short chronicling the rescue efforts, half a million people were ferried off Manhattan island to various locations nearby. A half a million people. The woman had told me that they did what they should; nothing more and certainly nothing less.
As for myself, I was changed by the encounter. We exchanged nothing but some conversation. I don't know her name, and I cannot remember anything at all about what she looked like or her voice. Only her words, and the intense feelings behind them. At the beginning of the Boatlift film, there is a quote: "A hero is a man who does what he can." (Romain Rolland). When I shared the video on my Facebook page, I said that "This is what Character looks like." Riding on that Ferry, out of earshot of my family, a Hero spoke to me. A real Character. And I am all the better for it.
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