HONORING THE LOST WRITERS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH
Getting home has never felt so good. My daughter Elaine hugged her brother and broke into tears. Moments later, I, too, dabbed at wet cheeks as we embraced in a three-way affirmation of family and safety.
My journey for pleasure and for business began on September 4. At age eighteen, Elaine had never been to New York. We told each other it would be a mother-daughter trip we would always cherish. My fears of a heat wave and unbearable humidity, of snarly New Yorkers, of crushing crowds, and of getting lost all vanished. Unashamed to be frenzied and euphoric tourists, we consumed as much of New York as we could in one week: Times Square, Rockfeller Center, and China Town; Central Park and Grand Central; the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and St. Patrick's and Trinity churches.
I was thrilled to see my agent, Meredith Bernstein, in her New York office and to hand my hopes for an expanding publishing career to her in person. We had discussed a book idea a year prior when she had visited me in Oregon, and now I could give her the finished proposal for a series of books for writers. I also delivered copies of my former two books for writers with the grand hope of finding a publisher who would buy their rights.
During late afternoon on September 10, Elaine and I debated whether to go to the top of the World Trade Center or the Empire State Building. We chose the latter and snapped photos of the famous twin towers just as we had earlier in the week from a sunset sailboat ride out of Battery Park.
When our Tuesday the 11th flight departed from La Guardia at 8:20am, we craned our necks to peer out the tiny airplane portal for one last longing glance at a city that lives the American dream. Elaine later told me that at that moment, she was thinking how much she loved New York, wished she could stay longer, and then imagined a plane crashing into one of the big skyscrapers. As I settled back, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment by having given my agent the best that I could produce. I imagined the day when I would return to New York to meet the editor who would publish one of my books.
I also reflected on a perfect trip. I wondered why I had been so uncommonly worried about it before hand. After all, everyone belongs in New York City--the tall, short, and lumpy-bumpy; the old, decrepit, mentally ill, and disabled; the rich, poor, famous, and unsung; foreigners, strangers, people of every ethnicity, race, and religion. The city epitomizes secular success. It is the confluence of commerce and culture. Admittedly, this is New York City's finer self, but these shining qualities are exactly what the twisted terrorist thugs hate about it, and about the United States.
Shortly into the flight, our United pilot broke my reverie. "Due to National security, all aircraft have been ordered to land immediately." My daughter and I stared at each other, not comprehending. National security? All aircraft? Our plane? I wondered if their had been a nuclear attack. Passengers grabbed air phones to learn the horrible news: one tower, the second tower, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, a rumor of more hijacked planes still on their way to destinations unknown. Our flight was diverted to Chicago's O'Hare, where we landed on a tarmac eerily devoid of human life and entered a terminal that had been evacuated because O'Hare was considered a possible target.
We were among the lucky passengers to find a hotel. After three days of waiting there, we heard Mayor Daly announce more delays at O'Hare. By my calls to United, it would be yet more days before we could fly home. Elaine and I felt shocked and trapped. I made a decision. I found a one-way rental car, and we began our 2200-mile return to Eugene.
On the road, I felt as if we were being pulled and propelled from Wisconsin to Minnesota to North Dakota, from North Dakota to Montana to Wyoming, from Wyoming to Idaho to Oregon, by an endless umbilical of the American flags we saw along that route.
Somewhere in the unbroken miles of the grassy plains, a realization turned my grief more personal. On September 11th, in Pennsylvania, in New York, and in Washington D.C., writers died. Among the thousands of dead, how many were writers? How many hoped to be novelists? Hoped to write a family history, a memoir, a letter asking forgiveness? How many of the victims dreamed of getting published, of quitting a day job, of becoming best-selling authors? How many doubted their abilities and let doubt and distraction stop them from trying?
One hundred? Ten? How many? I felt the loss anew, not only for lives cut short but of dreams cut short. And I felt helpless. What if our United plane had been a different one that morning? What if our dreams had died with us?
As we crossed the state line into the "Big Sky" country of Montana, I asked myself this: What if I vow never again to say, "I can't." What if I never again claim, "I'm too busy." I thought of the personal stories that had already reached the newspapers. I thought of the faces of the dead. What if I adopted one of the recently silenced writers, one writer who was cruelly robbed of a chance to finish a novel, start a love letter, or dream a poem?
A month after September 11th, my agent called with the news I wanted to hear-and then some. An editor at Perigee, a division of Penguin-Putnam, wanted to buy my former two books for re-release and the first two books of my proposed series. A four-book contract! Not in my wildest dreams!
September 11th and the way the events of that day are, for me, inextricably linked with my career made me realize how important it is for all of us to continue writing with renewed courage and boldness. It may be a small, perhaps insignificant gesture, but I'll write my books in honor of a writer who has no tomorrow. From this day forward, I will write as if I have no tomorrow.
©2002 Elizabeth Lyon