Sept. 11, 2020 — I’m guessing we all remember where we were 19 years ago today. Now, Cardies, can we acknowledge ourselves for, little by little, adapting to the new way of being in the world that came with that day? Between making the necessary adjustments in your own day-to-day, and trying to grasp the pandemic’s impact on all mankind, have you found time to step back and give yourself credit for letting go of your former ways, embracing new ones, and accepting the losses and the gains?
Last weekend, by sheer coincidence, I read a really touching first-person account of how then-Wall Street Journal reporter Gwendolyn Bounds recreated her life after life-altering 9/11. I loved Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most. I found it so beautifully written and engaging that I want to share a few excerpts with you here.
To preface: Leading up to September 11, 2001, Wendy covered the fashion industry and was living a big, fast, interesting life interviewing the likes of Ralph Lauren and Donatella Versace. And she lived across the street from the World Trade Center. In Little Chapel on the River, she describes leaving Manhattan that unimaginable day, and then — over the next year — letting go of what was and coming to peace with what is truly important to her. She shares how she wove herself into the fiber of a small community an hour north of her beloved Big Apple.
Little Chapel on the River is a simple, clever, beautifully written book that I sense many in our Cardie community will much enjoy. Reading of how Wendy made her way makes me wonder what this eloquent observer would have to say about how American life is again changing fundamentally. I know her writing inspires me to find a few minutes this weekend to sit quietly and give myself credit for how I’ve been able to adapt.
Cardies, if we each write our stories and then tuck them away somewhere to be found 19 years from now, how interesting it will be to read about how gracefully we actually made it through this incomparable time, eh?
Perfect Prose
Following are a few favorite pieces of perfect prose from Gwendolyn Bound’s Little Chapel on the River.
Wendy recalls the start of this same day 19 years ago, “The sky is a brilliant blue and clear, the air unusually warm for September — a sign we are still closer to August than October.”
She writes that, through the terror of the Twin Towers falling, “I start talking to God. In the oh-yeah-remember-me way that only happens when I’m scared. I look up toward where the blue sky was an hour earlier—and I assume God is in fact up there somewhere in all this—and I manage to meet the occasion in a way that is spectacularly unpoetic. I promise that if this turns out okay, things will be different … I’ll be different. Be better … change somehow. I’m wasting God’s time because I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Still, I keep making promises anyway. And then those vague assurances sail up into the dark heavens to wait their turn amid the thousands being made by everyone around me.”
In the days following the attack — when Wendy’s apartment was deemed uninhabitable for the foreseeable future — she went in search of a temporary home and, with friends, stumbled in to what she would later call, Little Chapel on the River. Here’s how she described her first impression of Guinan’s Pub in the small town of Garrison in New York’s Hudson River Valley. “The yellow rays streak across the water and onto the backs of the men standing in this green-walled, green-ceilinged Irish drinking hole nestled between the river and railroad tracks. The pub, which is barely big enough to hold the old giant metal Coca-Cola cooler stuffed with beer, red-topped bar and five stools, is tacked onto the side of an old country store — almost as an afterthought. The seventy-six-year-old owner lives upstairs, as he has for more than four decades.”
She tells us, “Guinan’s was where they came after a death to toast and remember, on holidays and birthdays to pay their respects and buy a round or two, or on a late winter afternoon when a cold wind made things lonely enough that you just needed to see a friendly face.
“I’d known places like this, long ago when I was a kid,” she recalls. “They had dotted North Carolina’s rural coast, their collective space a surrogate country club for my young parents, who never quite fit into structured social life in our suburban hometown a few hours west. Smelling the river’s scent slipping in the windows, I felt an unexpected tug at memories buried deep, hazy from neglect …
“Inside these walls, I never thought about where else I needed to be, or what else I needed to be doing. And I hadn’t felt that way in a long time …
“Unless you chose otherwise, your world with the other patrons began and ended at the door — which was where you could coat-check the rest of your life.”
Going on a year later, Wendy wrote, “Crowds surge up and down the sidewalks on weekends marveling at the lush green cliffs rising from the river. With winter’s strict gloom far out of reach, they pause at real-estate agents’ windows, pointing at ads and imagining buying a little piece of this perfection to keep. These days, more and more, I find myself pausing with them. Our rental home’s yearlong contract will be up soon. It’s been nearly a year since the attacks, and returning to the city is on the horizon … Garrison was initially just an unexpected layover on the way back to town — a place to gather our wits and belongings before plunging back into our old lives.
“A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined wanting more than what New York City had to offer. But a year ago I never knew the quiet lure of what happened out here … I think about leaving all this behind and unexpectedly feel my throat catch. Which is why I pause at these agents’ windows to stare at the addresses on dirt roads whose twists and turns are now as familiar to me as those around Wall Street … I stand peering through glass alongside the tourists, paralyzed, and feeling like a jealous lover as I silently tell this town I want to be with her unconditionally—winter, spring, summer or fall.”
Fyi, I read the book on my Kindle so I could export my Highlights here for you (and these are but a few!) If you purchase the book, may it be directly from one of the many wonderful bookstores among our Retail Partners. Thanks, Wendy Bounds, for sharing your amazing talent with a world in need of just your sort of solace. To a peaceful weekend.
Jodee Stevens
Founder & Chief Creative
Her writing brings back such memories of today, 19 years ago– where I was, at work in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a brother who worked on 5th Avenue in New York. I remember not knowing where that was in relation to the Twin Towers and trying to reach Ben on the phone for hours. Finally– his voice, and hearing him tell me he was safe, far away and yet watching the fires burning and ash covering the world. Thank you for your beautiful words, Wendy– healing words along with the memory of such a tragic day.
Thank you Jodee for this sharing. As always you come and touch us in moments of need . . . and aren’t we all needy today, again for the 19th year in a row? Does it lessen the pain? Yes but we don’t want to let it go entirely because we need to be reminded of the pain and the loss. Even if it wasn’t our pain we still belonged to it. We all wept that day and for long after. Let us continue to appreciate the things we lost that day and those we gained from the peace of letting go . . but not forgetting.