A Moment for the Moon

Caught between the moon and New York City...
This is the view of Manhattan from Hoboken. (And yes, you can see the moon, if you look closely.) That funny building on the far right is the end of the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side, the tunnel which connects Hoboken and Manhattan by car and train. You're looking at the southern tip of the city, so towards the left end of the group of skyscrapers is where the World Trade Center stood.

The shiny buildings reflecting the last of the afternoon sun are the remaining World Financial Center buildings; Tower 5 of that group fell on the building where Mr. O'K was attending school at the time. He was on his way to class that morning, just about to get on the train to the World Trade Center from Hoboken. He stopped to see what a bunch of workmen were staring at: across the river, a plane had just crashed into one of the WTC towers. Chris watched, stunned, as a second plane--a large jet flying far too low, fast, and steadily to be any normal passenger plane on a course for one of the three airports that had surrounded him his entire life--he watched as this plane flew directly into the second tower and exploded.

Then he came running home, woke me, and told me what had happened.

We turned on the television, and the New York coverage was shortly interrupted by the Pentagon crash. We walked the block from our apartment down to the waterfront, and the view you see above was our view, with, of course, all the smoke and sirens and fireboats and chaos now going on across the Hudson River. Small groups of people were gathered silently along the waterfront; one person had brought a radio and the news rattled on quietly in the background.

And that is where we were standing when we watched the tower melt to the ground, like a candle, except rumbly, like an earthquake, and much faster. Then nothing, we could see nothing more, nothing but smoke billowing into the crystal blue sky.