Twins

I have been thinking a lot lately about my father. It's funny how, as I endure the journey into my psyche that I would mostly rather skip, he comes creeping in. And unfortunately, when my counselor asks about him, my recollections are pretty rotten: his drunken breath, his volatile anger, my desperate fear and loneliness as a little child and even, later, as an adult.

But yesterday, as my thoughts turned often to the Trade Center tragedy, my remembrances of my father were good ones. For if any person symbolized New York City to me, it was him. My memories of the city are intertwined with my understanding of who he was and would become. In the 60's he imagined himself a hip beatnik writer from Greenwich Village, hobnobbing with some of the most interesting names in modern American literature. Later, he was a cosmopolitan--attending gala affairs with the likes of Henry Kissinger and other heads of state. He was a wise and talented professor of Shakespeare and Chaucer at a city college just steps from the World Trade Center. And always, he was a Yankee fan.

As a little girl, every "night before" of my bi-yearly summer trip to the city was spent wide-eyed, imagining what the magical months held in store for me. I was spoiled rotten with trips into Manhattan for a whirlwind shopping spree at Lord & Taylor for evening dresses and tights and shoes and gloves. These would be followed by excursions to Lincoln Center or the Met for a symphony or a ballet, or up to 42nd Street for a musical or a play.

Every summer, of course, was highlighted by our trips to Yankee Stadium--not in the 80's, when the Yankees stank, but in the mid- to late-seventies, when the team was led by Reggie Jackson, Bobby Murcer, the Red Sox-killing Bucky Dent, and Thurman Munson, the beloved Yankee Captain who was killed in a plane crash in 1979. I was in New York that summer and still have every single newspaper clipping from the days and weeks following his death. I shared the city's mourning for a fallen hero.

Perhaps my most anticipated event, however, was the ritual of our lunch at the World Trade Center, not in the mall on the bottom floor, but at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of tower 1, the north tower. After lunch, we would descend all those stories on the express elevator, walk to tower 2, and ascend 1,377 feet to the observation deck. Yes, many times in my life I stood outside, atop one of the tallest buildings in the world, and experienced the city I would always love, the city that would one day break my heart.

When I awoke on the morning of September 11th, 2001, I did something I still do not ever do. I turned on the television. I don't know why. My sister and I had shared a wonderful evening the night before at a Trisha Yearwood concert, and I was feeling happy and hopeful. I cannot tell you--I'm sure I don't have to-- with what shock and grief I was filled by my dawning realization of the events of that day. My first reaction? I took from the top shelf in my closet a box of photographs and unburied every photo I had ever taken on my trips to New York. There they were, those lovely twins in all their glory. What was not seen in those photographs, except by me, was every happy and magical memory I held of what was, in truth, a stormy, angry and ultimately estranged relationship between father and daughter.

For the first time in two years, I was glad my father was dead. This was a loss he could not have borne. Never mind the words that would never be said, the professional sharing that would never take place, the healing that would never happen for either of us. It was good that he had missed this. His heart would have been broken beyond repair. Sometimes I think mine still is.

What exactly has done the damage, however, is difficult to say. A terrible tragedy, a despicable act, befell our nation on 9/11. But it's more than that. Beside every thrilling memory of a little girl in a big city being spoiled by a doting father stands the haunting truth. The embarrassment I felt at a tirade in a restaurant because of cold food. The fear of a violent, drunken anger being turned on me because of a harmless mistake. The desperate knowledge that the summer was three months long and mommy was thousands of miles away, saying over the telephone, "stick it out. You have to stay."

Memory is a tricky thing. When I think of the Twin Towers, I see smoke and fire and destruction. But if I try very hard, on an especially good day, I can imagine the food and the company and the wind in my hair, a little girl in the most magical of all cities, with the world at her feet. Daddy is like this too. I mostly remember hearing him say, "you're a nice-looking kid, but you'll never be a knockout." I feel pain and disappointment and anger. But if I try very hard, on an especially good day, I feel like the daughter I believe he thought I was--a little girl who grew up very much like him. A lover of great literature, an inspiring teacher, a hopeful writer. And of course, always, a Yankee fan.