I’d Trade the World
DAN DIDN’T CALL me on September 11, 2001, even though, during
my final semester at New York University, I lived a little too close
for comfort to the World Trade Center for him to not have been
curious about my whereabouts and general living/dead status.
But Dan was not an alarmist, and he was also correct when he
said, “But you had no reason to be down there. I knew you were
okay.”
If either one of us had been a different kind of person, at least
one of us would have felt offended. But we weren’t and I’m not
and Dan never got the chance to be a different kind of person than
the one he was and therefore still is when I remember him.
This is how memories work — exaggerated, under-exaggerated,
or just plain spot on — they are for us alone to hold close in lieu of
the person whose physical body is no longer here to grasp. That’s a
lot to say that Dan “should have been”, but was not, concerned about
my well-being during that fateful day. Interestingly, I don’t think
he was concerned about how I’d continue to live without him,
either. This doesn’t mean that he wanted to die or didn’t care —
quite the contrary.
Dan possessed a deep faith in me and my abilities — much more
so than I did. He didn’t leave me, as my mom would have said, “in
the lurch”. Instead, he imbued in me — like that same rogue set of
cells which lies dormant in the form of cancer until something
although, does anyone understand what? in the body goes haywire
and we discover it was there all along.
This secret cell he placed inside of me was a capability I didn’t
know I had.
By not calling me immediately “worried sick” that I had, for
some odd reason, been at the World Trade Center site that mornI’D
TRADE THE WORLD 117
ing, suddenly a worker in the building on a high floor or playing
curious tourist for the day, Dan would have undermined the Me he
knew I was.
But I would have taken his worried call like I’d take his presence
in my life right now in exchange for this “knowing” he left me
with. The Personal Ground Zero I had to live through after experiencing
the Collective one.
I would trade, but since I can’t, I try to be grateful and take it
personally in the best possible way that he thought I could live
without him.
