Posted this in my NYC thread Inside The 40 but thought I’d share here as there is a portion that deals with a lot of what we discuss in this forum….
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I’m on my flight back from Philly/NYC now. What a great way to spend a week with my little girl.
Despite watching her team finish 6th out of 34 teams in the platinum division of the largest all women’s flag football tournament in the US, our 30 hours in NYC was the highlight. Independence Hall was awesome and standing in the east room was pretty surreal. Valley Forge was great and running my hand along the exact handrail George and Martha Washington used each night climbing the stairs to their bedroom was really cool. In a weird way it was kind of like shaking hands with them. However NYC was amazing and the 9/11 memorial and museum were so moving. They were so far beyond some very high expectations going in.
Full stop, I never expected to cry but I did, twice. The first was within 5 minutes of standing at ground zero. Realizing I was there, the exact location where so many of my countrymen and women perished as I watched along in disbelief was just too much to bottle up. Anger, sadness, confusion even an element of rage - I felt it all. I thought a lot about a friend I made in 2019 when we were both in the midst of some pretty serious personal shit that we had to resolve. At the time he was terribly depressed and an alcoholic. You see, 18 years earlier he was there that 9/11 morning walking to Wall Street where he worked. He was about 3-4 blocks away when he saw the first plane hit the north tower. He rushed to help folks who were injured on the street below. As he was rendering aid bodies of people who chose to jump began landing around him. To this day he suffers from PTSD and alcoholism which ruins his marriage. Thinking about him made me angry.
It’s hard to admit this next section because I consider myself a very tolerant person, but I found myself bothered by the presence of a large muslim family who was there with six or seven women in full burkas walking around the memorial while their husbands were in shirts and polos. I’m embarrassed to admit this but I couldn’t help but wonder what they were truly there for? I didn’t even know them and for all I do know they were there for the same reason I was. But being in that place took me back to an incredibly intense time and some very raw and unprocessed emotions from 22 years ago surfaced. I need to spend some time reflecting and unpacking what happened within me at that moment of my time at ground zero. It wasn’t anything extreme but for a guy who prides myself on working really hard to not judge a person based on appearance, in that moment I did and I’m not ok with that.
Moving on, I was incredibly proud of my 14yo daughter who showed tremendous respect and interest the entire 3 hours we were there. Of the 100+ photos I took last week these are a few of my favorite.
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I’m on my flight back from Philly/NYC now. What a great way to spend a week with my little girl.
Despite watching her team finish 6th out of 34 teams in the platinum division of the largest all women’s flag football tournament in the US, our 30 hours in NYC was the highlight. Independence Hall was awesome and standing in the east room was pretty surreal. Valley Forge was great and running my hand along the exact handrail George and Martha Washington used each night climbing the stairs to their bedroom was really cool. In a weird way it was kind of like shaking hands with them. However NYC was amazing and the 9/11 memorial and museum were so moving. They were so far beyond some very high expectations going in.
Full stop, I never expected to cry but I did, twice. The first was within 5 minutes of standing at ground zero. Realizing I was there, the exact location where so many of my countrymen and women perished as I watched along in disbelief was just too much to bottle up. Anger, sadness, confusion even an element of rage - I felt it all. I thought a lot about a friend I made in 2019 when we were both in the midst of some pretty serious personal shit that we had to resolve. At the time he was terribly depressed and an alcoholic. You see, 18 years earlier he was there that 9/11 morning walking to Wall Street where he worked. He was about 3-4 blocks away when he saw the first plane hit the north tower. He rushed to help folks who were injured on the street below. As he was rendering aid bodies of people who chose to jump began landing around him. To this day he suffers from PTSD and alcoholism which ruins his marriage. Thinking about him made me angry.
It’s hard to admit this next section because I consider myself a very tolerant person, but I found myself bothered by the presence of a large muslim family who was there with six or seven women in full burkas walking around the memorial while their husbands were in shirts and polos. I’m embarrassed to admit this but I couldn’t help but wonder what they were truly there for? I didn’t even know them and for all I do know they were there for the same reason I was. But being in that place took me back to an incredibly intense time and some very raw and unprocessed emotions from 22 years ago surfaced. I need to spend some time reflecting and unpacking what happened within me at that moment of my time at ground zero. It wasn’t anything extreme but for a guy who prides myself on working really hard to not judge a person based on appearance, in that moment I did and I’m not ok with that.
Moving on, I was incredibly proud of my 14yo daughter who showed tremendous respect and interest the entire 3 hours we were there. Of the 100+ photos I took last week these are a few of my favorite.
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