four seas four suns: Bryant Park

Bryant Park NYC is, for many reasons, a very special place to me. I've had happy moments there and some sad ones too. It's been my go-to place to chill out, cool off, blow steam, center myself, people-watch, cloud watch ( one of my secret pastimes) and just breathe and be. I walk through the park twice a day, so it is a touchstone as I enter and leave the city and I would say - an even deeper touchstone than that.

This past Friday as I entered the park, I was greeted by the stunning sight of the lawn filled with empty chairs facing downtown. I recognized it immediately for what it was - a September 11th Memorial. There was a little sign explaining the installation: 2753 chairs - one for each person who died in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

On that terrible day...no, on the day which hosted that terrible event, I saw the smoke of the first impact from my elevated train platform. The platform was crowded and everyone was pointing and talking on their cellphones. Yet inexplicably, when the downtown train pulled into the station, almost everyone boarded and went into the mayhem, because almost no-one believed the horror that was at that moment just a rumor. I turned around and went home, figuring that if it was true, the subway would be snaked with paralysed trains - which indeed it was in very short order. By the time I was in my car driving home, a second impact on the World Trade Center was confirmed, and the Pentagon strike was being reported. I was safe in my car heading home but I felt so vulnerable - already infected with fear.

When I got home, I called my Dad in Trinidad and we stayed on the phone watching it on TV together, thousands of miles apart. The world never seemed so small, and we felt eminently touchable.

A few days later my son - then three, came home from Kindergarten singing a three syllable song:

Re-mem-ber

Sep-tem-ber

E-lev-enth

when the twin

to-wers fell...

At the time it was too fresh, and still too unfathomable an event for the song to have any more lyrics, and maybe it was enough information to give to three year olds.We all wish it were as simple as the towers being taken out. It will take perhaps another generation before those words could ever be adequate.