Most people won’t associate gluten and the horrors of September 11, 2001. I mean, duh. I wouldn’t have either if I hadn’t been spending so much time in the bathroom after a gluten-ing earlier this week, and therefore was able to read the extensive New York magazine encyclopedia of 9/11, ten years later. And it all comes back: From the futility of having the hospitals on standby, to the weirdness of the mayoral election. After avoiding books, movies, even discussions of September 11th for ten years, it was probably time that I tried to stop avoiding thinking about that day. I guess.
As one of the millions of people living in New York City on September 11th, I obviously was in the path. But aside from the darkest memory of that day — thinking a friend had died when our phone connection cut off as the second tower fell — I’d simply pushed away everything else that happened then. That memory, however, will never go away. Continue reading
