Coming From A Long Way Away

Finally, yesterday, I saw Come From Away, the brilliant Broadway musical about the unlikely collision of cultures in Gander, Newfoundland, on 9/11.

The moment the cast appeared on stage, I felt my hands clenching, the memories of that day flooding back. On my left sat my daughter, Nicki. She was five years old then, sitting with me in the kitchen as I watched one plane hit, then another, while I talked on the phone to my brother in New York. In New York, a doctor at St. Vincent's Hospital, only blocks away from the scene. The hospital where they waited, and waited, for the injured, as if mere injury were a possibility. They had been ushered away from the windows, and it was up to me to give him the play by play. I remained glued to the television for days, until Nicki asked why does this keep happening? I was still trying to understand why it happened even once, why the twin towers I had watched go up over a number of years had evaporated in what seemed to be a split second. 

On my right sat my mother. My 87 year old mother, who is virtually deaf, but loves going to the theatre and, though she cannot hear, reads voraciously beforehand and knows exactly what it is about. She was in New York that day, too. New York, her home. Though she still had her hearing, back then, she was out of earshot when it happened, somewhere on the subway -- by my calculation very near the World Trade Center -- on her way north to a museum. She emerged from the subway, several miles away, to a stunned and eerily quiet city, smoke billowing in the distance where buildings used to be. My brother and I were frantic, for a while, trying to reach her. It hadn't occurred to her to turn on her cell phone, and even if she had, service was spotty at best. Interrupted. 

A musical. About my youngest daughter's first real memory of life outside her own childhood. About the day my brother remained quarantined within his hospital's walls, awaiting patients who never arrived. About the day my mother, against all odds unless you know my mother, somehow made it across the river, home to Brooklyn, while the tip of Manhattan smoldered. About the day I lost my innocence. Or my ignorance, I suppose. A musical, of all things. 

A musical about the worst day. About the day when folks in a town in the middle of nowhere and the "plane people," the thousands of passengers on planes that did not blow up that day, collided. A day when people sprang into action and gave everything they could to welcome these unwitting victims, imperfect strangers. The plane people all came from somewhere else, from away, places where the locals had never been. By the end, there was no such thing as "away." Everything had changed, and nothing, no place, would ever seem the same. There was much good that arose from the ashes that day, and in the days and weeks that followed. This story was just one of many. 

My hands eventually unclenched. I could see that Nicki felt as uncomfortable, at first, as I did, laughing. We were both spent, by the end, from crying and laughing, as we rose with everyone else to cheer the cast and the musicians who had helped us to remember so much of what we often forget, from so many years away.