By Beth Poznansky Ritter

I hadn't cleaned off my black construction boots, so that more than a month after I'd worn them, they were still covered with the horrible white dust they'd accumulated at the World Trade Center disaster site. That evening is one I won't forget. My fiancée, Gene, and I went to help out there, two days after the attack. It was the most horrible of realities, and I'd taken some of the death and destruction home with me on my shoes. I'd glance at them from time to time, still sitting by the doorway where I'd left them. Sometimes I'd shudder, remembering standing in the long line of strong men, helping to pass heavy buckets of debris. 'I should really clean those boots off', I'd think, occasionally. But I couldn't. I couldn't touch them, let alone wash them off. To do so would feel disrespectful, as if I'd be washing lives down my bathtub drain, adding further insult to the lives already scorched and wasted.

Gene offered to clean them off for me. At first I told him not to. And, while on the phone with my mother, I broke down. I cried: "I can't do it, Mom. I can't wash them down the drain." Listening to myself, I felt I sounded like an irrational woman. But she understood. "Don't, then", she said. I didn't. But neither would I wear them. When we were getting ready to help with the Bay Improvement Group's fall planting, though, I reluctantly decided, by default, that my boots would be the best thing to wear. Gene cleaned them off, at least somewhat, after I finally consented. Some white dust stubbornly remained around the edges. I ignored it, and we went. I found out when we arrived at the planting area that we'd be planting bulbs--daffodils-- which were deemed the official memorial flower for the World Trade Center victims. We planted hundreds of bulbs, it seemed, before we were done, between two different areas. Now it was new topsoil that covered my boots.

Later, I mentioned this to my fourteen-year-old son. "Think about that. I wore the same boots to the plantings today. So, I brought some of that dust with me, and it mixed with the soil that will start new life!" I sat there, enveloped in the bittersweet irony of my revelation. He regarded me momentarily. "Hippy", he said, trying to add some levity, teenage-style. I suppose, somehow, he's right. I am a product of those times, as he'll be a product of these times. The adults then didn't envy kids growing up in the "turbulent sixties" any more than we envy kids growing up now. At least he made his "flower child" mother laugh; at least he did help plant those bulbs, a reaffirmation of life that will emerge in the spring as daffodils. I both look forward to seeing them, and know, like the rest of us, I'll cry all over again at their added meaning.

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