The last couple of nights the Tribute in Lights has been my reminder that the fourth  anniversary is upon us.

Those bright white twin lights shooting up in the night sky: a reminder to remember what we never can forget.

The last couple of days, the sky has been as bright blue as it was on that Tuesday.
And here it is four  years later and our lives are the same and not the same.

That morning, as always, I ws listening to WNYC on the radio. Brian Leherer reported that a small plane had crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I, along with many others, imagined a Cessna or something. Not a jet or a terrorist attack.

Strange to say, I didn’t think much of it. But then it happened again. Another plane — "What is going on with Air Traffic Control?" I thought to myself. "We’re being attacked," someone said.

Attacked? A feeling of utter dread ran through me – that thing I’d always feared was happening. Where were my children? My daughter, only 5 years old, was in the kitchen. My son was at school…

I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t fathom what was going on. What was happening to all those people in the building, on the plane. Were they going to be okay?

Listening to the radio, I put nail polish on my daughter’s toes. Anything to maintain a sense of normalcy. Anything to keep her from knowing that I was afraid, that there was something very scary going on.

Unthinkable. I heard a siren in the distance and thought of my friend, Firefighter Dave Fontana, who was probably on his way downtown. Squad One would be among the first to be called in the event of an emergency like this. Somehow I knew that though I knew nothing at all.

I ran to PS 321. Many parents were there, hovering in the lobby, talking to the principal who was figuring out what to do…Some parents were pulling their children out of classrooms. I decided to keep my son there. He was safe, afterall. Unless something else happens. That’s what we were afraid of. Something else might happen and what would it be. Still, at school he was safe from the television set. Safe from the panic of his parents, of the grown ups in our apartment building.

I ran over to my friend Marian’s  apartment. She knew though she didn’t know for sure that her husband Dave was gone. She knew it in her heart. It was tragic to see. I told her that of course he’d be coming back. Of course he would. He always did. But she knew. Strangely, she knew. I left her smoking a cigarette in her garden.

Running back to the school, I did a quick accounting of everyone I knew. My father, omigod, he and my stepmother are in their Brooklyn Heights apartment with its view of New York Harbor and the World Trade Center…

My mother was with my sister who was in Manhattan having her first insemmination. She must get pregnant, I thought. On this day when so many people are dying, she will create a new life. Of course she will. On this sad, sad day, a new life will begin.

It didn’t work out that way. The procedure didn’t work and she didn’t get pregnant that day. She had many more medical prodedures – insemmination, in Vitro, ovum donation. She did finally get pregnant but miscarried soon after; her fallopian tube was removed due to an ectopic pregnancy.

This evening my sister and I sat in the back garden of The Chocolate Bar, drinking white wine, and watching one-year-old Sonya fall asleep in her stroller. Adopted from Perm, Russia nearly three weeks ago, she is a treasure.

Sonya wasn’t alive four years ago, untainted is she from the memory of the 11th. She may have been put up for adoption at birth, but now she is beloved beyond compare. Wanted. Cherished. Adored.

Walking home I saw the Tribute of Lights above the storefronts on Seventh Avenue. A reminder to remember that which we never can forget. 3000 mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and friends.

Gone but not forgotten.

This year we go about our lives, even the day before the day, It’s almost like  we’re back to norma; — I ride the subway without fear, don’t jump everytime I hear a helicopter fly above, have stopped worrying about bridges and tunnels.

But I am not the same. And never can we be. I’m really not back to normal at all.