The Time of Our Lives

by Peggy Noonan

  “Computers?” I said.

  He said the wires of computers, the innards and machinery of computers—they keep burning. “There isn’t a piece of glass in the ruins, not a single piece,” he said. The glass was melted and pulverized, turned to ash. There isn’t a desk or chair in the ruins, either, he said—from two towers full of desks and chairs. Again, they were burned and pulverized by heat and force.

  He mentioned another odd thing I’d noticed, we’d all noticed: Paper survived. Paper from offices of the Trade Center—merger agreements, divorce decrees, memos that Sandra in Accounting had a baby boy, custody petitions—the paper of the Towers shot into the air. When the Towers tumbled, it created a reverse vacuum and papers were sucked up into the gathering cloud and dispersed all over downtown, the rivers, Brooklyn and Queens. But the binders the papers were in—the legal binders, the metal rings inside them—they didn’t survive.

  What he told me made me think of a telephone repairman who wrote his memories of Sept. 11 and sent them to me after last week’s column. He had been working on a telephone pole in Queens. He heard the explosions, the lines went down on him and everyone else. A piece of paper fluttered down and he caught it. It was a business card. A few days later he called the number on the card and asked for the name. A young woman answered. Yes, she said, she was alive, she had made it out of the building. No, she didn’t know her business cards had made it to Queens. (Hollywood: Use this. In your version they fall in love.)

  * * *

  I went to a book party in downtown Manhattan, in the spacious condo of a man and woman who had been walking their children to the first day of school when the Towers were hit. They have three gorgeous kids, one of whom, aged about four, asked to stay up to see the guests this evening and then, overwhelmed by the smiles, crinkles, wrinkles, earrings and perfume of adults bending down to kiss, and frightened perhaps by the gooney look old people sometimes get when they look at childhood beauty, hid in her mother’s skirt and then her father’s arms. The guest of honor, a wonderful man of depth and charm, arrived late, from a television appearance. I hugged him, congratulated him, asked how he was. “My whole life is work,” he said softly. Then he sucked in his abs, turned, shook hands with friends and worked the room.

  We all feel that way so often: “My whole life is work.” We all work so hard. But it is, as they say, a choice. We wouldn’t have to work so hard if we would take everything we have and rent a $600-a-month apartment just outside a suburb of Tulsa, and join a local church and get a job in a hardware store and be peaceful and kind and take the elderly neighbor to the hospital every other week for chemo.

  But it is not the American dream to want to live outside a suburb of Tulsa in a $600-a-month apartment. It is the American dream to, among other things, be at the book party celebrating your friend’s bestseller surrounded by brilliant, accomplished and interesting Americans who take part in the world, who are immersed in it and try to turn it this way and that.

  We work so hard to find happiness. But more and more I think of what a friend told me on the phone 10 years ago after I had written an essay on the subject. He called and said: “This is a famous quote from someone, I forget who, and this is what you mean. ‘Happiness is a cat. Chase it and it will elude you, it will hide. But sit and peacefully do your work, live your life and show your love and it will silently come to you and curl itself upon your feet.’”

  * * *

  After the book party, I went to a dinner party in upper Manhattan, at the home of a writer and thinker and his smart, bubbly wife. It was the three-month anniversary of Sept. 11, and naturally the talk was: 9/11. Normally these conversations end in something like resolve and laughter, with someone saying something upbeat. But not this night, and I was glad of it. I spoke to a man, a dynamic businessman and a good person who was, to my surprise, utterly changed. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year. I found out that until recently he had been at Ground Zero every day since Sept. 11. He had lost his office, scores of friends and coworkers, had rushed to the site and worked there for months as a helper and organizer.

  Now he is a changed man. He used to carry success on his shoulders like a well-padded suit, and now in his eyes there is grief, grief, a deep well of grief. “I had to go to the doctor because I couldn’t stop smelling the smell,” he tells me. It is the olfactory disorder of Ground Zero: Work there long enough and you can’t lose the acrid burning smell, your nose absorbs it as if it were memory and won’t let go. You wake up 30 miles away at home in your bed and it’s 4 a.m. and you smell it and you think you’re going mad.

  He told me how Sept. 11 had changed his life. “I am more religious,” he said. He looked like he wasn’t sure what that meant and was surprised to find it happening to him, didn’t fully understand it but knew it was true: He’s more religious. And, he said, what he wants to do now is not make money but help people, serve the public, do good.

  And he meant it. It wasn’t post-traumatic virtue disorder, it was: A life in change.

  * * *

  I find myself drawn to and heartened by people who can’t get over Sept. 11. Because I can’t, either, and I never will. But then I talk to them and realize: They’re here, and I’m here, and we’re at the party, so we’ll get over it.

  * * *

  On the way home and for no particular reason I remembered something I was told a few weeks ago by a friend who had in another time and for other reasons become a changed person.

  I have known him for years but had not known the story he told me. He had been a roaring alcoholic, a man who’d lived to drink and gamble. But something was changing in him, and one night he was at home drinking by himself when he saw something on TV—something someone said, something that moved him deeply. And suddenly he knew his life must change. He picked up the phone and called the 24-hour hotline at a local rehab hospital. And he said, slurring, “I want to spick to a dahkter, I think I’m an alcaholic.”

  “Is that you, Billy?” said the woman who answered the phone.

  He was shocked. Someone must have reported him! They must keep the numbers of known local alcoholics!

  “How did you know my name?” he demanded.

  “Because you call every night at 2 a.m. How’s your daughter?”

  For two weeks he’d been getting drunk every night and calling the rehab line and having long conversations with whoever answered. And it was news to him. The next day he entered rehab, and for many years he has been a changed man.

  People change. It’s not true that they don’t. It is true that it is more unusual than it is usual.

  * * *

  At the dinner party a friend told me of his son, a Marine at Camp Lejeune. My friend and his wife may or may not see their boy for Christmas, it depends on his orders. The mother, a beautiful lady, frankly admitted her fear for her son. The father was proud and wistful. I mentioned an acquaintance of ours who has a handsome young son in ROTC and who will join the armed forces when he graduates in June. I bumped into her and she told me that this is where parenthood makes hypocrites of us all—you know our country needs men like this, you know we must fight, but not my boy, not my son.

  The father and mother I was talking to smiled and nodded. It’s the same for them. “Let me tell you what my son said to me when I told him how worried I was about him,” the father said. “Dad, I am fully capable, fully trained and armed to defend myself, and I am not the target. You are not armed and trained and you are the target. Worry about you.”

  * * *

  I worry about all of us, and so no doubt do you. But Wednesday I had a wonderful, heartening experience online that I will share with you because it may help you, too. I like to go to Christian Web sites such as www.redeemer.com, where you can find the Rev. Tim Keller’s inspiring and informative sermons. I go to Catholic Web sites, too, and Wednesday I marked a great feast day of the church at one.

  * * *

  It was the feast of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a celebration of the event
500 years ago in which the Mother of Christ appeared before an earnest and loving Mexican peasant named Juan Diego. The appearance and the miracles that followed sparked what was probably the biggest mass religious conversion in the history of the Americas. And indeed Our Lady of Guadeloupe is considered by Catholics to be our country’s patroness.

  As America becomes more Latin and Hispanic, the feast has become bigger, grander. It was marked in Washington with a mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and there were masses and festivities in Albuquerque, N.M., Houston and Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz. But according to an article on a Catholic Web site the biggest celebration in the U.S. took place in Los Angeles. “Following a procession through the city’s streets, Cardinal Roger Mahoney celebrated a mass for nearly 20,000 who gathered on the football field in the Cal State Los Angeles Stadium.” Twenty thousand.

  And, most delightfully to me of all, yesterday in Rome, at the end of a general audience, Pope John Paul II for the first time ever activated a Web page. They brought him a laptop and he hit a key with his Parkinson-pained finger and suddenly www.virgendeguadalupe.org.mx was born.

  At another site I found that people were writing prayers of gratitude and petition to mark the feast, and I read them. They were so moving and beautiful.

  There is so much going on in America, in churches and on Internet sites, that no one in normal media, elite media or any media really seems to touch. But I continually discover and rediscover that there is a whole world of people who exist apart from the New York Times, the Washington Post and our beloved Wall Street Journal, who exist as part of a real and strong and authentic American community and indeed a world community.

  At the site I visited the prayers and petitions to Our Lady were in English, Spanish and French.

  They asked for consolation for those who died or lost loved ones in the Trade Center attacks, they asked for protection for our country and peace for the world. “I pray for the people and kids in Afghanistan,” said one.

  Most were in one way or another personal: “Dear Blessed Lady, intercede for me and pray for me that with your help I can get the money to save my home. Ask your divine son to show his infinite mercy.”

  “Dear Lady, please… pray for dj’s, entertainers, artists, performers and media and writers.”

  “Mama Mary… please pray for… all the teachers, everyone serving in the armed forces, President Bush, all the leaders especially of the Philippines, all the terrorists, bin Laden, all the priests and religious and our Holy Father.”

  “Dear Lady of Guadeloupe, please let all my friends forgive me for all that I have done.”

  “Pour les enfants abandonnes.”

  “Senora, en tu dia te recuerdo y te amo. Gracias madre por todos tus bienes.”

  “Je taime et mercies de rester avec moi et ma petite famille je taime tres fort dis bonjour a Padre Pio pour moi.”

  “Happy Feast Day, my Lady Mother. You seem so close today, telling me to let the desire of my heart be that of your Son’s, and to let his desire be mine… bring me back to my monastic community, my Lady, though I have failed and fallen so many times.”

  “Jesus, Son of Mary, our Mother—forgive me and help me to know and love her more. I desire to be just like her… Mama Mary, help me to let go of covetousness, vanity, lust for the flesh and food… and all the vices and weaknesses that separate me from your son… (help) all my students, especially John.”

  “Blessed Mother on this, your feast day, please free [my loved one] from the bondage of drug addiction.”

  “I beg for my estranged husband and for the purity and sanctity of my children… Please, my Mama, obtain a miracle for my family.”

  “Dearest Lady Thank you for all the trials I have received these past few years for in them I have found a new love of God.”

  There were men praying to be better husbands, wives to be better wives, prayers to be freed of alcoholism and healed after infidelity, for runaway children and broken families.

  All were marked by humility and gratitude, many by pain and anxiety. They prayed so hard for our country, and there was a sense that they knew that they were praying at a time of heightened alert, and during Ramadan and in a time of extraordinary need.

  I found it all so moving. So now I go there and pray along with them, and feel enlivened by their community. It’s as good as, better than, a wonderful dinner party.

  * * *

  I will leave you with a happy thought. The other day into my imagination popped a scene that I dearly hope will happen. I imagined that I was walking along Fulton Street in Brooklyn. It was a pretty afternoon, just pre-dusk, and the street was full of shoppers. And suddenly a woman came running from the Wiz, and she shouted to no one, to everyone, “They found Osama! They caught bin Laden!” And the street stopped stock still and then someone cheered and then we all cheered, and we went into the Wiz and watched the reporters telling the story on all the big TV monitors, row after row of them. And strangers talked to strangers and people who hadn’t wept since Sept. 11 found themselves with tears in their eyes, and it was an unforgettable moment in American history.

  Actually, I shared this scene with my table at the dinner party earlier in the week.

  “Dead or alive?” someone asked. I shook my head. “The way you imagined it, is Osama dead or alive?”

  I said I didn’t know and didn’t care. A man said I should care, it’s bad if he’s alive, that means crazy hostage things and suicide bomber nuts. Someone else said, “I feel sure that when they get him if they get him it will be an unknown CIA agent who gets him, and we’ll never know his name.” He will be invited to the White House and shake the president’s hand and be assigned somewhere far away, and it will be one of the great secrets of all time. He will be The Man Who Got Osama. And we won’t even know his name.

  I thought, “Oh no, we must know his name and dedicate things to him like mountains and libraries.” I said we have to know and she said no, if he is known he will be in danger, and so will his family: “The Jihad never forgets.”

  Well, we’ll see how it goes.

  We’ll see how it ends.

  For me today more prayer sites, and a visit to the pained and peaceful people of faith. And then on to Fulton Street, where there’s a big Macy’s and a Wiz and television and appliance stores. On to the great bustle of Brooklyn in 2001, where miracles still happen, and have.

  Courage under Fire

  The 21st century’s first war heroes.

  The Wall Street Journal: October 5, 2001

  Forgive me. I’m going to return to a story that has been well documented the past few weeks, and I ask your indulgence. So much has been happening, there are so many things to say, and yet my mind will not leave one thing: the firemen, and what they did.

  Although their heroism has been widely celebrated, I don’t think we have gotten its meaning, or fully apprehended its dimensions. But what they did that day, on Sept. 11—what the firemen who took those stairs and entered those buildings did—was to enter American history, and Western history. They gave us the kind of story you tell your grandchildren about. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, and I don’t think my city will, either.

  What they did is not a part of the story but the heart of the story.

  * * *

  Here in my neighborhood in the East 90s many of us now know the names of our firemen and the location of our firehouse. We know how many men we lost (eight). We bring food and gifts and checks and books to the firehouse, we sign big Valentines of love, and yet of course none of it is enough or will ever be enough.

  Every day our two great tabloids list the memorials and wakes and funeral services. They do reports: Yesterday at a fireman’s funeral they played “Stairway to Heaven.” These were the funerals for yesterday:

  • Captain Terence Hatton, of Rescue 1—the elite unit that was among the first at the Towers—at 10 a.m. at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.

  • Lt. Timothy Higgins of Sp
ecial Operations at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, on Portion Road in Lake Ronkonkoma, out in Long Island.

  • Firefighter Ruben Correa of Engine 74 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on West 82nd Street, in Manhattan.

  • Firefighter Douglas Miller of Rescue 5, at St. Joseph’s Church on Avenue F in Matamoras, Pa.

  • Firefighter Mark Whitford of Engine 23, at St. Mary’s Church on Goshen Avenue in Washingtonville, N.Y.

  • Firefighter Neil Leavy of Engine 217 at Our Lady Queen of Peace, on New Dorp Lane in Staten Island.

  • Firefighter John Heffernan of Ladder 11 at Saint Camillus Church in Rockaway, Queens.

  And every day our tabloids run wallet-size pictures of the firemen, with little capsule bios. Firefighter Stephen Siller of Squad 1, for instance, is survived by wife, Sarah, daughters Katherine, Olivia and Genevieve and sons Jake and Stephen, and by brothers Russell, George and Frank, and sisters Mary, Janice and Virginia.

  What the papers are doing—showing you that the fireman had a name and the name had a face and the face had a life—is good. But of course it is not enough, it can never be enough.

  * * *

  We all of course know the central fact: There were two big buildings and there were 5,000-plus people and it was 8:48 in the morning on a brilliant blue day. And then 45 minutes later the people and the buildings were gone. They just went away. As I write this almost three weeks later, I actually think: That couldn’t be true. But it’s true. That is pretty much where New Yorkers are in the grieving process: “That couldn’t be true. It’s true.” Five thousand dead! “That couldn’t be true. It’s true.” And more than 300 firemen dead.

  Three hundred firemen. This is the part that reorders your mind when you think of it. For most of the 5,000 dead were there—they just happened to be there, in the buildings, at their desks or selling coffee or returning email. But the 300 didn’t happen to be there, they went there. In the now-famous phrase, they ran into the burning building and not out of the burning building. They ran up the stairs, not down, they went into it and not out of it. They didn’t flee, they charged. It was just before 9 a.m. and the shift was changing, but the outgoing shift raced to the Towers and the incoming shift raced with them. That’s one reason so many were there so quickly, and the losses were so heavy. Because no one went home. They all came.