unglued

I leave for New York this week and I am looking forward mostly to being alone.

I spent a week in NY in September of 2001. I flew home on the morning of Sept. 10th after having breakfast at the World Trade Center. On the way out, I paused at the mailbox on the corner and balanced a cup of take-out coffee in one hand, my elbow holding the mail slot open as I dropped some postcards into the mailbox. They bore silly messages to my girlfriends at work, joking that I knew full well that the postcards would arrive days after I was home.

And they did.

The postcards bearing images of the shimmering Twin Towers at sunset on the front and September 11th postmarks arrived about a week later. A few weeks after 9/11, one of my co-workers returned the postcard that I had mailed to her. She thought it was amazing that I had somehow cheated certain death by 24 hours. She thought I should have the postcard and keep it always, because she viewed it as a sort of talisman.

Every year since I have been in New York on September 11th. The first two years I was on assignment covering 9/11 stories. I am drawn there.

I will arrive at Grace's three days after she's taken off for San Diego and as much as I love her, the idea of coming into an empty apartment in Queens and dumping my bag in the hallway and not having to say hello to anyone or DO anything is one that I relish. I will be required to speak to no one I know, at least for a few days.

My friend Tracy will be in town and she wants to go to Greenwich for the day, so I'll meet her at Grand Central and we will take the train to Connecticut and shop and do lunch and other girlie things she so loves to do.

On 9/11 I will go to St. Patrick's for the 7:00 a.m. mass though I am not a practicing Catholic or a practicing anything. I will hang my press pass around my neck and trek to Ground Zero. I will take copious notes and try to avoid trite cliches.

But the rest of the time, I will remove my watch and stroll endlessly and wander and take the subway out to Coney Island and drink lots of coffee and spend one entire morning at the New York Public Library and just be.