We Will Meet Again

Dear Juliet

Sorry I'm late, there was a lot of laundry and ironing to do. I don't think I can manage much tonight, but there's an important anniversary I should observe so I'll reprint this blog entry from Dear Miss Landau.

Ground Zero, afterwards

 There’s always a girl sitting alone on a bench. Work goes on to put up a new building in place of the lost towers, and the sound of the ta-pocketa ta-pocketa machines reverberate above the din. The skeleton of the new edifice rises from the foundations. Raw-red girders are just beginning to climb skyward, but she’s always there.

I cross the causeway to West Street and Battery Park. A young man brushes by me on the escalator, wrapped tight in his own private little world of finance and shutting out all else with headphones. I met another young man like him once, in the plaza before the towers fell.

I come to the water’s edge and relative silence greets me. There’s Lady Liberty in the distance and closer, Ellis Island. I saw them from a higher vantage point before.

I remember this borough is an island. Quite a fragile little sliver, really. The people never really thought the terror could reach them, but it did.

The young girl sits on the bench. She has her thoughts on other matters, perhaps, and it is a cold and chilly day, but it is as if she is a witness, reminding those who remain of life’s vulnerability and of its beauty.

The branches of the trees, not yet clothed in leaves, are stark against the sky. A young mother pushing a baby buggy walks past. The occasional jogger passes by. Youngsters throw snowballs. People still smile.

(2nd March 2010)

I know things are difficult for you, and for your nation, too. Keep smiling through may be cliché but it's also true, or so said Vera Lynn during World War Two. Dad may have seen her sing in Burma.

We've all had our backs to the wall at one time or the other. I know how it feels and I'm always thinking of you.

I hope you're still smiling.

Love,

James