Before

 

Once upon a time, I won a contest and took our whole family to New York for a two day stay. The kids were 21 and 16.
I grew up near Syracuse, considered way, way upstate. New York was THE CITY. You went there to buy clothes and eat.
In my own family, my husband and I went to New York on business, usually for the day, flying in from our home in Washington. Back in the day, DC had no decent pizza, deli, or even breadsticks . Consequently, in New York we ate and brought food back.
It was 2000, we drove to The City, parked the car and decamped to the Marriott adjacent to the World Trade Center. I think you know where I’m going with this…but wait. Because of all the memories of 9/11 this year, I’ve been thinking about our trip. It was memorable because our family had never done anything like it before.
We went to Katz’s, took a Circle Tour around Manhattan, saw a Broadway show, Times Square, and the American Museum of Natural History/Planetarium. We also took a cab.
I had repeatedly warned the kids that we were not going to take any cabs. We used the subway or buses. But when we left Katz’s on Saturday night, we were bursting at the seams and had leftovers in bags. It was dark and we were far from the subway. A cab was hailed. My husband, brave soul, took the front and the other three of us were in the back. The driver floored it, but only in between traffic lights, which seemed to be every block. I grabbed my daughter’s hand and held tight, wondering how much longer we had to endure being hurtled forward and then whiplashed to a stop. We got to the hotel and exited looking like the shaken out-of-town tourists we were. The kids, for once, admitted I was right. It was the ride of a lifetime—better, they said, than anything they had ever experienced at King’s Dominion Amusement Park. They didn’t want to repeat the experience any time soon, they said. Once was enough.
Since we were so close to the World Trade Center and the Towers, we toured Sunday morning. It was a lazy morning in June, and we had none of the the bustle and hum of thousands of office workers. The lobby of the World Trade Center seemed nearly empty. I was skeptical at first because of the elevators. But, I remember reasoning to myself, “This building has already been car bombed. I’m sure it’s extra safe.” We shot to the top floor, walked around in the enclosed windowed space, and found that you could, by escalator, actually go out on the roof. Again, I was skeptical, but moms need to be brave.
I can only say that it was a transcendent hour. The breath-taking beauty of the view, of Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, of so many landmarks, of the horizon, and what flew below (birds and a blimp) was stunning. The silence moved me to tears. We were above anything that made noise. It was really, really quiet with only about five other humans in attendance. It was mountain-top quiet–meaningful because of what was below and all around you. No sound but the wind. I knew it was a gift. We were together and we all felt the same “Wow.”
In retrospect, it was a once-is-enough trip. The four of us together, in The City, on the roof of a World Trade Center Tower. It was more than enough for a lifetime. And it was Before.