Technically, this photo by James Estrin was taken on September 13, 2010, not 9/11. But remember how 9/11 bled into days, weeks, and then months as we watched the fires burn and tried to figure out the "new normal." How we still got up and made coffee and walked the dog, but also bought bought American flags for the first time in our lives and put them on our cars or in our flower boxes without irony.
My friends and I drank too much and sang patriotic songs at karaoke at the LA Farmers Market. And we made Pat wear a red, white and blue leather-fringed vest up on stage. The vest or "The Vest," as it came to be known, was passed around so every singer could wear it and we all stood up and sang louder and saluted "The Vest" and hugged and kissed and woke up in friends' beds and thought things would never be the same. Then we watched as Letterman stammered back onto his show. And we all gathered at Maeve's for the first SNL. What was going to be funny? I don't remember, but they figured it out. And we stopped drinking as much. And hugging and asking about families back east and if "everyone is all right?" Code for "did you lose someone?" Then came the proposals, the marriages, the moves away. The children born after 9/11 who will never know what it was like before. Or that their parents used to be young and untouchable and had each other instead of family on the couch that day at Van Ness Ave. Hugh, I know you regret not filming it. But I still remember it clearly. I think we ate pasta.
The photo above by James Estrin was originally published in the early edition of The New York Times on Sunday, September 16, 2001, along with his personal account of covering the attacks. Read it here.
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