My mom is a real estate agent in New York, and ten years ago she got the listing of a home for sale by a Japanese family. While the house was on the market, the father of this family was killed in the Trade Center on 9/11, and his wife immediately took their kids and fled back to Japan. They left behind for my mother this Sony Handycam, in great shape and worth 1500 bucks, and my mother gave it to me.I’ve used it often for the past decade, and it just goes to show that not every remnant of what happened in New York that day turned to rubble. I think about this camera and how it must have been used by that dad on all kinds of happy occasions like his kids’ birthdays, and how today those kids’ memories of this country must be that it’s the place where they lost their dad for no reason.
The other day my mom asked me if there’s as much talk about 9/11 out here as there is in New York, and I told here there kind of wasn’t. I suppose everyone who was a safe distance from Manhattan that day will never feel quite the same way people there still do, but that doesn’t mean we don’t remember.
