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Home » Stories, True and Otherwise

Angels In America

Submitted by on September 11, 2008 – 1:55 PM95 Comments

The evidence that Don is an angel is compelling, provided you’re inclined to believe it in the first place: his date of “birth” is September 11; he appeared when I needed him, and withdrew (to New Jersey) when it seemed I could continue alone; and his name is Don. “Father.” “Paterfamilias”; “protector.” “Teacher,” if you like. Or perhaps he is properly a Donald, a name which means “ruler of the world” — or, according to several sites I consulted, “brown stranger.” Not very diplomatic, but not inaccurate either.

Diana Vreeland once said that magic doesn’t come to those who don’t expect it, and I have a similar belief about ghosts: if you don’t believe in them, you won’t see them (or become one). And I don’t believe in angels, really — didn’t then, don’t now. As metaphors, yes; as beings that interact with us on earth, no. Everyone has stories from that day about timing: they decided for whatever reason to drop off dry-cleaning and it put them behind, they missed the train although that never happens, they called in sick when they’d ordinarily suck it up with a cold that mild. My story from that day about timing is Don, an actual flesh-and-blood non-wingéd guy with opinions about reality TV and Thai food, and I don’t know the substance of those opinions, but he must have them, because he must be a mortal being, and he must be a mortal being because, in the end, I just don’t know what in the hell an angel is doing escorting me up the FDR Drive with everything else going on.

I will stipulate that God works in mysterious ways, but assigning me an angel when it is an all-hands heavenly-creatures emergency five blocks away is straight-up bad management. I mean…why? Why. Makes no sense. I appreciate the assist, mind you, if that’s what happened. I just don’t get it. Angels carry briefcases now?

On the other hand, he’s never turned up again. No “why” to that either.

The “why” remains, always. We know why, and yet we don’t. It’s like the time my bag got stolen; I knew why. But I wanted to find the thief anyway, not just in the hopes that s/he still had my bag and maybe a few of the things in it, but to ask why. Why didn’t you just ask me for the money? Why couldn’t you just take my Filofax, pick it for a credit card and the cash, and then dump it — why did you need all my addresses and my phone? My phone calls people I know; what do you need it for?

My mother had a friend whose daughter worked at Tiffany, and Tiffany had a line of solid silver key fobs with enamel coatings that looked like vegetables, so my mom got to special-order one for me, a tomato key fob from Tiffany. When it arrived, Ma found that Tiffany had sent a pumpkin instead, and even though her friend’s daughter had done Ma a favor and Ma didn’t want to make it into a whole thing, and even though my tomato tattoo does look like a pumpkin when my arm is at certain angles, Ma chewed her lip and took a breath and called her friend back and said, “I know it’s a favor you’re doing me, but…it has to be a tomato and this is actually a pumpkin,” and I mean to tell you that these various transactions took months, and when the correct beautiful Tiff-mato finally arrived, I got it for Christmas instead of for my birthday in March, and you don’t care about any of that, you probably think it’s stupid and what kind of tweehole has a tomato key chain anyway, but it meant something to me. It had a little ding in the side where it always clonked on the doorframe when I unlocked the deadbolt. It had a story. My mother went to a lot of trouble with that thing and got it exactly right, and then you took it, and for what? They don’t make them anymore and it DIDN’T BELONG TO YOU SO WHY DID YOU DO THAT. I needed that thing that MY MOM GOT ME, you son of a bitch.

I know why. Thieves take things, it’s what they do, that’s the why. It’s never good enough.

Looking at the light columns downtown, it’s the same feeling, the same question. I love the lights, the way they look blocky and rectangular at the bottom, like buildings, and then as your eye goes up, they become fuzzier beams cutting through the clouds, but really, I want the buildings back — the actual buildings, with the people in them. I know that will never happen, and I know why, but the buildings and the people in them were stolen from all of us. That skyline belonged to us! Those people were ours.  They weren’t yours to take. Why did you do that? How could you steal them from us? WE NEEDED THEM.

I believe in ghosts; the idea of ghosts is necessary. Ghosts haunt the living for the living, because we need them to, but what we always really want is the person, the spirit in the body with the body, the spirit not disappearing into the clouds. If Don is a real man who is groaning at a terrible pun on a birthday card right now or staring out his office window, knowing that butter-cream frosting awaits him come dinnertime, that means that one day, maybe, I can get an answer. One answer.

Happy birthday, my friend.

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95 Comments »

  • Whitney says:

    Happy Birthday, Don.

    Thank you, Sarah, for introducing him to us.

  • Rachel S. says:

    I come here every year for ‘For Thou Art With Us’ and I was hoping you would post today.
    Thank you.

  • Linda says:

    Yeah, me too, what Tara said, me too.

    I continue to believe that Don will turn up. Perhaps it’s the Quaker in me, but my belief in angels is very consistent with my belief in Don as a flesh-and-blood guy who exists somewhere. We all have a bit of the angel in us, and we all can be that for someone.

    I don’t believe he’s gone anywhere, I don’t believe he doesn’t want to be found. I just think the world is bigger than it sometimes seems. I firmly believe he will turn up, and I mostly just feel impatient. I’ve seen people resurface in my life I was sure never would, and it’s always a delight. I’m sure he thinks of you on this day as well. Happy birthday, Don.

  • Kate says:

    It’s strange. I connect two very different things to this day that I think of every year.

    I was a senior in high school in 2001. My parents called and told us to go home and then they wouldn’t let me out to go buy the Ben Folds cd that came out that day, that I had been waiting for for ages. I was so annoyed and I felt bad for being annoyed but I just wanted to do something normal instead of watching things happen on TV over and over.

    And then I think of you and Don. And how I wondered if you were ok as I was driving home from school so early int he morning even though I’ve never met you. And how much of a polar opposite that thought is from my wanting a silly CD. And how crazy it is in such a connected world that Don hasn’t popped up yet.

    Every year I hope he does.

  • Kristina says:

    I actually went and googled for a Tiffany tomato key chain, hoping against hope…but I’m sure you’ve done that too.

    I honestly forgot it was 9/11 today. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing – my mom was supposed to be at the Pentagon that day, but was too lazy to trek in from Alexandria to renew her ID. I can only remember the relief, rather than the panic, so maybe…I don’t know.

    I sincerely hope Don turns up, sooner or later.

  • mia says:

    also, I just checked through the giant address book at work and didn’t find any matches for you – BUT I did see a few guys who go by Don, but their name is Gordon. I don’t know if that helps you at all.

  • Lauren M says:

    Happy Birthday, Don.

    Thanks, Sars. You really are an incredibly beautiful writer. I know there are millions of people who were there on that day, and I know you don’t even have his last name…but count me in as someone who is heartily hoping that you will one day find him.

    I’m sorry about your key chain. Thank you for everything you do. Love.

  • Heather says:

    “There are no angels left in America, anymore……”

    Happy Birthday, Don.

  • rayvyn2k says:

    Happy Birthday, Don.

    And like so many others have said, this day is not complete until I come here, read the entry and cry.

    I’m so glad your Don-angel was there for you, Sars. I know my life would have fewer laughs if you were not in it.

  • RJ says:

    He’s out there somewhere.

    I’m glad I’m not the only one remembering today.

    “Do not simply remember. Choose never to forget.”

  • KellyEMca says:

    I don’t think there’s much to say more than what has already been said here, but I knew there was a reason I waited until the end of my work day to check TN. Sniff.

    I’m hoping one day for a tearful Sars/Don reunion all Oprah style, and when it happens, I’ll make sure I’ve bought stock in Kleenex.

    Thanks, as always, for sharing with us.

  • Amanda says:

    A friend of my family~Sara Manley Harvey~worked on the 93rd floor of the first tower to be hit.

    I was in my senior year of HS in Victor~near Rochester, NY~and I remember the teachers not telling us what was going on. I had early dismissal that day, so I was able to get home by noon, and I didn’t move from in front of the TV until probably 8pm.

    By then we’d heard from my godmother~Sara was her niece.

    It was so hard to go back to school~it seemed to be all the teachers wanted to discuss in class, and it didn’t seem like anyone else I went to school with had lost anyone, so losing my shit in the middle of class was kind of obvious.

    Sars, I hope to see that you’ve heard from Don every year since. And to echo an earlier sentiment, The Search for Don would make an amazing documentary.

  • Ali says:

    I checked the site from work today, looking for your update. I’m glad I remembered to check again when I got home. I’m sure everyone thinks about a lot of different things on this day, but I always think of you and of Don.

  • Sally says:

    Whenever I’m in a group and the “where I was when it happened” stories begin, I always follow mine with yours. Of course, there is no way I can tell it as beautifully as you, but I tell anyway and direct them here. And hope against hope that someone knows someone who knows Don.

    Happy Birthday, Don, and thank you, Sarah.

  • Rose says:

    I checked this several times this morning, and wondered whether you were going to let the anniversary pass without comment. I’m glad you didn’t. Your essay from that day touches me every year.

  • Suga T*ie says:

    I too, listened to NPR this morning, and thought of Don, and wondered if we’d hear today that Don is found. Don is inextricably linked to the day, for so many of us. The great thing is that barring any other proof, Don is the one beacon of hope that remains from that day. Until he is found, to me, he’s just out there waiting on us to find him. Amidst all the loss that day, Sars, you found someone. Not lost. Found.

    Beacon.

    Hope.

    Don.

  • Dayna says:

    I wonder if Don feels all the people that he doesn’t know wishing him a happy birthday. You can count me among their number. I’m very glad that you were there for each other on that terrible day. And even if you never find Don, there’s a place in each of your souls that belongs to no-one else but each other. I know that Don (wherever he is) thinks of you with the same affection and thankfulness that you feel towards him.

  • Cij says:

    Every time I ever meet a Don I ask him when his birthday is and where he was on 9/11. I keep hoping you two will meet up again- although maybe you *were* entertaining angels unaware.

    They were our people, our buildings…and I will never forget either.

  • Jill says:

    Like everyone else, I continue to hope that you and Don will cross paths again.

    Thank you, Sars.

  • Nomie says:

    Today was so much like that day that I started to cry as I was walking downtown. The same beautiful Indian summer, the same painfully blue sky.

  • Jessica says:

    I for one am still hoping that we (and by “we” I mean the TN readership) have just not done a good enough job yet of lighting up the African-American equivalent of the Batsignal, and that at some point someone will tell someone will someone will tell someone will tell Don that we’re looking for him.

    And I hope Don is alive and well, and up for a beer, and mightily amused.

  • Cheryl says:

    I think God has enough bandwith for an angel for you and the rest of what happened that day.

    For some reason though I think Don is a man who acted like an angel, and that’s good too.

  • Sukie says:

    I have been following your blog(and other pursuits) for years and today is the first day I have ever commented, earlier about Red Dawn, and now about this entry. I come here every year to read your take on this day. This day that changed us as a nation and so many people individually in ways that cannot be comprehended. Anyways, this is my long winded way of saying thank you. The story of Don is one that is inspiring and frustrating at the same time and I always look forward to your thoughts on this day.

  • Kristen says:

    Happy birthday, Don.

  • Catie says:

    Like so many others, I come back here every 9/11 (and weekly, but always, always on 9/11). I was 13 when it happened and I’d just found your website a few months before through TWoP. The 9/11 entries are something I hold close to my heart because they helped me work through shit and they continue to help every year, when I think that maybe I won’t cry this year and then I do and then I feel better. Thank you, Sars. Thank you, Don.

  • Inksmudge says:

    Happy birthday, Don.

    Sars, your writing is always awesome, but somehow it becomes so much more beautiful and poetic and soul-touching on this day. I just posted on my blog about the importance of remembering this day, and part of my remembering includes coming here and reading your post, and re-reading For Thou Art With Us. Thanks for that.

  • RK says:

    @ Nomie: Me too. All day long, all I could think was that it was such a beautiful day for something so ugly to have happened. Today was a carbon copy of that gorgeous day, and I found myself holding my breath all day long.

    And wondering what Don was up to, of course.

  • Deanna says:

    I too come back here every year on this date. Not hoping that this will be the year because I think if you did find Don the news would be way too hot to contain, but simply because you’re still here. A lot of people aren’t as a result of that day, but you are, still writing about baseball and movies and good news and bad news. You live, and you hope. Your posts on these days are all of the good things that couldn’t be taken away that day. Thank you.

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I’m looking out the window at the towers of light and hoping somehow the money comes through to keep them for next year.

    I’m also pondering how hilarious it would be if I found Don…and then we all found his Amazon wish list. I’m picturing him opening his seventeenth carton of birthday books while his wife (or husband) is all, “PROMISE me you will not talk to strangers anymore, I DON’T CARE what day it is.”

    It’s good to have all you actual people here. Nice, happy little bookfest on tomorrow’s Vine, pinky swears.

  • Nev says:

    Happy (belated) birthday to Don…I truly hope you find him one day, Sars. Count me in as a supporter of a ‘Find Don’ doco! C’mon, why not?! :)

    Your writing is, as always, remarkable, touching and heartfelt, especially “For Thou Art With Us.”

  • La BellaDonna says:

    And Sars, I hear you on thieves and the destruction they wreak. They’re not just stealing “stuff”; they’re stealing the bits and pieces that make up the memorabilia of our lives. The tomato key fob from your Mom, the tiny emeralds my mother, now dead, bought for herself on her very first trip anywhere by herself (to Brazil!) and had set in earrings when she was twenty, long ago, and then gave to me – it’s not the dollar amount, these are the artifacts of our memory. What’s really horrible is that often, what’s most valuable to us is worthless to the thieves: maybe it’ll bring a couple of dollars, but probably it will wind up in the trash.

    My Mom’s not here anymore to tell me about being twenty and a sheltered New Jersey girl from a private high school class with twelve (twelve!) seniors in it, being brave enough to go by herself to South America at a time when sheltered young girls from New Jersey didn’t do that, and a time when she was young and full of hope. And I hate that fucker who stole those earrings every day of my life, and sincerely hope that his life is one of unmitigated misery – but it’s probably not.

  • RJ says:

    Nomie & RK – same here!!! It was so beautiful that day … it was just another day in September. I was thinking about being mad at my sister and going to the gym and things I had to get done that week.

    Two weeks before I’d gotten to go to Russell Crowe’s band’s (back then they were called Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts) show at Irving Plaza, and had such a great time, and now I think of it as the last time I was totally relaxed and happy because two weeks later I was standing on a corner in Chelsea trying to decide whether to walk or take the train and I was already late for work down in SoHo, and then that plane roared overhead and 30 seconds later everything became Before and After.

    Thank you for not pretending it never happened; thank you for not being people who feel we should all just move on – life did go on, but we all had to learn to live with that day, and with the images of all those photos on all those walls of people we’d never met put up by the people we loved them, and there are faces that are with me now every day of people I never met, and the worst thing we could do is forget them so THANK YOU.

  • Isabel says:

    What everyone said re: thank you, always. And your thing about thieves–beautiful, and true.

  • Randy's Girl says:

    Here I am again, checking on Don. Every year I send at least one person to your site to read your account of that day and give them something positive to remember – Don. After 7 years I know I will never forget what happened but much prefer to read your account of hope and companionship in Hell. Keep updating us on 9/11, I will keep hoping…

    To Don

    To Angels in all of their forms

    To hope…..

  • Amy says:

    One would think the internet was a big enough place that mentioning Don so many times and having it viewed by so many people, he would surely turn up.

    Maybe angles do exist. And Don was yours. As to why? Why did God give you an angel to escort you up the West Side Highway?

    So that you would have that moment, that experience, that memory. And you could share it with the rest of the world, letting us know that angels do exist, whether they be heaven-sent angels or mortal angels who will dine on buttercream tonight.

  • Meg says:

    Thank you Sars. I’m a native New Yorker and I was a college student, in class, when the towers were attacked. We all filed out of class (when it ended) and watched the news footage in the lecture hall. My heart dropped when they fell. Dropped with that feeling of losing something you never even knew was important to you, it had just always been there. Just like everyone else felt. I couldn’t call my dad for hours, but he was okay. He saw the first plane hit. Seven years ago, wow. My boyfriend at the time helped dig in the refuse and found someone dead. My friends had stories. We gave blood.

    I read your post when it happened, and cried. I’ve read your searches for Don every year, and hoped you would find him. I like that you’re contemplating his angelhood, though I’m not a paranormalist. You’ll find him one day, and if not, that’s a good theory. I still remember a reader of yours who lost his partner and came to you for help, it was just so heartbreaking. We all cried a lot.

    Now I live in another state and I’ve returned to college after a 5 year hiatus. Yesterday was the first 9/11 since that day where no one mentioned the WTC at all to me. It was even stranger being back in a classroom at the same time it happened, no one caring or even noticing. They’re just too removed from it, some of the kids were 10 or 11 when it happened. So thanks for still mentioning it. I think some of us still need to talk and think about it on an emotional level. Once a year is enough, but it helps.

  • Jen S says:

    Happy Birthday Don. Count me among the legions of unknown who wish you happiness and peace.

    And count me among all those who come here to read “For Thou Art With Us” every year. I keep thinking it will get less real with the passing of time, and watching the footage it does seem hyperreal, like another, violent reality sheared through out of nowhere into our world.

    But it’s our reality, and every year it, and Don, get more real.

  • The Hoobie says:

    Two years ago, while channel-flipping the week of 9/11, I came across a Frontline special that agnostic/secular humanist me couldn’t turn away from. It was called “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” and consisted of interviews with clergy and laypeople about how they viewed God, faith, and spirituality after 9/11. (Warning: It left me more-or-less an emotional wreck for days.)

    For me, one interview stood out from the others. It was with a Conservative/Reform rabbi who said that he saw God on 9/11 in the connections people made that day and the primal, urgent words of love they shared, especially in the transcripts of cell phone calls to loved ones from people in the towers and planes. He incorporated the words from some of those transcripts into his prayers; they showed him singing some of the transcripts next to a New York window. I still cry when I think about it; it was both beautiful and utterly devastating to watch him use those last words of love as prayers. Maybe Don and the connection you made that day are both divine and human? I hope you find Don, I hope you and he can make that connection again; that would be a small and profound victory.

  • BSD says:

    I work in downtown NYC and like thousands of others take the PATH to the WTC on a daily basis, so I’m constantly reminded of 9/11, as much as I try to not be reminded of it. It was a devastating day for me, as I would soon realize that 3 people who I knew perished on that day, including at the time my roommate’s sister.

    A month ago, I ran into an old colleague of mine on the train who I used to work with in Jersey City. He had left the firm we were with prior to 9/11, and I had not seen him since. So in the midst of catching up, bombarding each other with questions about old colleagues like “What happened to so and so?” or “Do you still keep in touch with what’s her name?”, I throw out a name at him to unfortunately hear, “Oh, you didn’t hear? 9/11.”

    Fuck.

    FUCK!

    We worked with this guy’s brother as well.

    “Oh shit, tell me you’re kidding! Fuck! What about(insert brother’s name here)? That must’ve killed him!”

    “Him too.”

    “Him too, what?”

    “9/11.”

    7 years on and I still can’t fully move on from that day. Not that I ever would anyway, but………

  • LynzM says:

    @ RK (and others) – Aubrey Atwater wrote a song about that, the blue sky on that day… you can get it here: http://payplay.fm/atwaterdonnelly It’s an extraordinarily touching song, fitting.

    Thank you, Sars, as always… you touched and continue to touch so many lives with your words. I continue to hope, with everyone, that you and Don will be reunited eventually.

  • Pammerjo says:

    Oh Sars.
    Two years ago, I made the decision to stop remembering 9/11 in the way I had the previous three years – pouring over my saved newspapers and magazines that I keep in a special box, as well as my own essay about the events, where I was, what I was doing. In light of all that has transpired since that day, I got tired of it being turned into a propganda machine. Acknowledge the day, yes, but spend it in mournful reverance, no.

    Then I come here this morning and read “those people were OURS”. shit.

    Although I lived in Pennsylvania in 2001, I am now in Montana. I am far from Shanksville, and New York, and Washington, but there’s really no escaping it, is there? As my parents can recall their memories of Pearl Harbour (“It was the first time I ever saw Daddy cry”, says my mom of her father), so I will do the same for 9/11. After all, it happened to all of us in one form or another.
    Thank you for the gentle reminder, and Happy (Belated) Birthday, Don.

  • Suzanne says:

    Sigh … This story moves me, very much. And has, ever since I first read it. I always come back to tomatonation on 9/11 – somehow, reading your words helps.

    It could be b/c I just wrote an etymologies paper, but “Don” is also a cognate of “gift,” isn’t it? :) Perhaps he’s lying low, perhaps he’s moved away from Jersey – who knows. What we all know is that his story, and your story … both are gifts to your readers.

    Happy birthday, Don! 9/11’s my dad’s birthday, too – and something about having an individual to celebrate, no matter how small he/she is on the scheme of things, makes the day a little easier to bear.

  • Bev N says:

    Sars, I’ve been thinking about this – how to locate Don, when I should have been cleaning, working on my own stuff, etc. But yours was more interesting than mine, and mine actually required that I make decisions and take actions. Anyway, the current way of finding Don isn’t working – even with a whole bunch of us Internet friends on the lookout.

    Would it be possible for you to create ( with someone’s help) a sketch of Don’s face & hair ? So you could REALLY give us what he looks/looked like?

    I am thinking that the police don’t let you use the sketch artists for this sort of thing, but I imagine that if you talked to a police sketch artist, you could work out a deal for him/her to do this for you outside of police hours. If you are really good with faces, you might even be able to find a site online that would let you create it yourself.

    I think we could make some real progress this way – imagine Don’s face
    all over the net! Anyway, just an idea.

    Bev

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    It saddens me to say, but: I just don’t think I remember him well enough anymore. If I had done it at the time, or a year later, maybe, but at this point I suspect that any description I give will be so generic as to be a waste of time.

    I wish I had thought to go on Craigslist several years ago and see if I could hire someone to do a sketch. Now I fear it’s too late.

  • LaSalleUGirl says:

    Well, now I’m crying. I’ve been reading Sars’ 9/11 posts and other memorial sites periodically throughout the day, but it was really “WE NEEDED THEM” that pushed me over the tear threshold. That phrase sums up so succinctly the baffled pain I feel every year on this date. As so many others have said today, thank you, Sars, for putting our grief into words.

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