As I was scurrying through Newark Airport’s Terminal C on my return trip to Paris in late September, the sign for a meditation chapel caught my eye.
Having just braved the New Jersey Transit train, sardine-packed with football fans heading to Secaucus for an evening game, a quiet place seemed just the thing. I had plenty of time.
The meditation room (which, according to the sign, was also an interfaith chapel) was silent, dimly-lit, and carpeted in a mustard tone. There were a few rows of chairs in front of which two men were bowed in prayer, each standing on a small rug. At the back, on the left, a woman in a cream headscarf, also standing, gave me a gentle smile.
“How to say the Rosary” and other pamphlets were arranged on a small table by American and municipal flags. Next to these was a wooden podium on which stood a steel sculpture in a plexiglass case with the words “PORT AUTHORITY WORLD TRADE CENTER” emblazoned on it. It was a rough-cut of New York the skyline, immortalized in a plate of iron from one of the original Towers felled on September 11, 2001.
In that moment I realized how disconnected l had become.
As an expat — a native New Yorker living in France for many years — I had forgotten to remember.
September is not the month I usually travel to the States. My nephew, a high school teacher in Brooklyn, was getting married and after attending the wedding, I spent some time on Fire Island in the beach cottage my sister and I inherited from our parents, where we spent our summers growing up.
This year, as I was at the beach on the anniversary of 9/11, I participated in an annual remembrance walk some two miles along a sandy path called Burma Road to the lighthouse in Robert Moses State Park.
The walk with my sister, my son, and a small group included a retired fireman who had been on duty on the day.
As we made our way to the lighthouse, the dramatic expanse of the setting brought a soothing sense of continuity, of waves that will never cease and speckled fawns who have not learned to be afraid.
It was a time to reconnect with what it means to remember together.
1. Ferry
The Fire Island Ferries have been bringing holidaymakers across Long Island’s Great South Bay to the Western communities of Fire Island since 1948. On the 30-minute ferry ride through the green waves and salt air, one feels one has left the world behind.
2.Family cottage
A classic cedar shingle beach cottage built in the 1920s. Purchased in 1962, for under $25,000, the final payment was delivered in glass milk bottles.
3.Fawn
A herd of some 400 white-tailed deer has lived and foraged on Fire Island since 1964 when the Fire Island Seashore was established as a national park.
4. Boardwalk
To get to the beach, take a two minute walk along a narrow boardwalk, just wide enough for two bikes abreast. Although there are no public roads on Fire Island, vehicles for maintenance, utilities, as well as classic yellow school buses make their way along the beach, leaving tire trenches which have become a part of the landscape in this fragile ecosystem.
5.House on beach
This house was not constructed sitting on the beach. In fact, it was originally several houses back from the dunes. Seasons of storms and shifting sands have swept those structures out to sea.
6.Sandpipers
A group of sandpipers sprint in rhythm with the waves, advancing to probe the wet sand for food, and withdrawing before the next round laps at the shore.
7.To the Lighthouse
The Fire Island Lighthouse was lit for the first time in 1858, and was an important landmark for transatlantic ships coming into New York Harbor. “For many European immigrants, the Fire Island Light was the first sight of land upon arrival in America, even before the Statue of Liberty,” according to the Lighthouse Preservation Society, which has run and maintained the sight since 1996.
8.Group walk
Tara Moira McBride, second from left, leads a group walk each September 11, a memorial to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attacks.
9.Burma Road
A view from the Lighthouse. Fire Island is an elongated spit of sand some 32 miles long and half a mile at its widest point. It separates the Great South Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.
10.Sunset Swan
One evening’s entertainment is much like the rest, but sometimes there is a bonus swan.
