Jan-08-08 For this exercise, we looked at a group of pictures in a book and randomly chose one which brought back a memory, then wrote about it. My picture was of three ‘emergency’ men dressed in yellow. We had about twenty five minutes to complete the exercise, hence the story isn’t ‘finished’..
It felt different. From the moment the stewardess thanked us for flying Air Canada and welcomed us to Laguardia. It felt different.
It was June in New York City, or more accurately, Queens, I should say. Eleven months since I had been down here on business. Nine months since the world had stopped and the dust had blanketed 14th Street and nothing was ever the same.
After all the times I had flown here, sometimes alone, sometimes with a colleague, everything should have been routine. There had been times I think I left the plane, picked up my luggage, got in line for the cab and was saying ”6th and 46th, please” (in that polite Canadian way, of course, probably lost on the New York cabby) before I was barely awake. But even though this flight was just as early as many of those before, I was wide awake and nothing felt ‘routine’ at all.
What was I feeling, getting into that cab, giving the same instructions as fifty times before? As I think back now, I do know what it felt like, a funeral procession. But this time, I wasn’t the pedestrian on the outside watching the large black hearse roll solemnly by, perhaps followed by similarly somber-coloured vehicles, like some sort of goth toy train set. No. This time, I was the widow inside that hearse; I was the father holding his sons hand; the mother holding her husbands. This time I was the one grieving.
Luggage loaded; safety message by some well know (in New York circles anyway) Broadway star dutifully listened to and seatbelt securely fastened, the cab lurched us into the long procession of commuters heading into Manhattan.
Perhaps some things hadn’t changed, after all, because we found ourselves crawling alongside the construction, weaving in and out, back and forth, seeking that perfect lane, w here everything moves smoothly, that doesn’t actually exist.
