New York Tribute / Sept 4
A few months after September 11 happened, I started taking the bus to work. Being underground made me nervous and I loved catching the bus on Fifth Avenue near the Met and saying hello to certain doormen. But before that, I had always taken the subway, passing by the firehouse on 85th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. The garage door was always open with the firemen outside, holding their coffee cups, and warmly greeting everybody on their way to work. So it was heartbreaking to find out that 9 of those men were of the 343 that lost their lives that day. The amount of well-wishers carrying flowers, candles, signs, were so many that they put up barricades and closed off the whole block for about a week. And then, after those well-wishers started to dwindle, they closed the garage door. It was very hard to walk by that closed door every day on my way to work. It made me tear up every single time. I can't recall how much time had passed when one morning I ran into a friend on my way to work. Together, we walked by the firehouse and suddenly the door was open again. And there was one fireman standing out there, coffee cup in hand, and we were almost afraid to look at him...but as we got up to him and started to pass by, he said, with a huge smile on his face, "Go get 'em, girls!"
