Born on 9/11
Or, a conversation in a bank vestibule on Juneteenth
Such a religious term.
Vestibule.
So seemingly out of place at a bank in a shopping center.
But that’s what the sign outside calls that glassed-in space between the outer door and the inner sanctum of this Chase branch in Annapolis, Maryland.
Vestibule.
It opens an hour before the inside does, like a compromise to impatient petitioners. Starting at 8:00 AM on weekdays, you can tap or insert your card on the reader next to the door and use one of the two ATMs inside.
Last Friday - Juneteenth - I popped in to get some cash before trying to sweat out my sins at F45. What follows is what happened in that enclosed yet exposed space, like some commercial confessional.
I tap my card next to the screen, enter my PIN, and pull the cash from the ATM. I tap my card again to check my balances, angled this time to block the view of the man who has since entered the space. He sidles up to the other ATM on my right.
“Bank’s not open yet, huh?” he asks.
“No,” I reply, matter of factly. “Just the vestibule.”
In turning to respond to him, I notice he’s the same man I had seen crossing the intersection outside just a minute before. He walks with a limp, wears glasses, and has an AirPod in his right ear.
“Okay,” he responds. “Thanks.”
A beat.
I try to enter my PIN again but am fumbling on the numbers.
“My daughter,” he continues, abandoning all ATM etiquette. “She’s giving me the best Father’s Day.” He says this unprovoked, says it with all the eagerness of a man with good news to share. He says it as a man who wants to be asked why it is that his daughter is giving him the best Father’s Day ever.
I oblige him.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“She’s getting married tomorrow.” He says this with the pride only a parent can know.
“Hey! Congratulations!” I exclaim. I’m a parent, too. Years away from a wedding, but a parent all the same.
I extend my right hand out to him.
He meets mine and we shake, crossing all boundaries that otherwise exist in the privacy of ATMs in close proximity.
At this point, I abandon my efforts to check my account, standing there going through a pantomime of inputting numbers on the keypad, trying to signal my interest in wrapping up my business and moving on.
He doesn’t take my hint. I don’t blame him.
“Yeah,” he continues. “She told me last year that she was going to get married in a year. But I didn’t think about the date she told me.”
“I get it, I understand,” I reply. The initial news of a wedding crowds out the ability to retain the details.
“My daughter,” he picks up again, not done yet with the conversation I was otherwise eager to end. “She was born on September 11. 9/11.” He adds this last part as if to remove any doubt about what day she was born.
September 11, 2001.
The day of the worst terrorist attack in American history.
“And now she’s getting married the day after Juneteenth and the day before Father’s Day.” He says this as a man who counts his blessings, almost in disbelief over the bunching of holidays and celebrations in such quick succession to one another. It’s as though he has to say it aloud to fully believe it, to make it real.
From his telling, it’s as though all his daughter’s life is marked by momentous events - good ones and bad ones. It’s as though he’s reached some reconciliation between the circumstances of her birth and the circumstances of her wedding. It’s as though he’s thinking through the strange coincidence of life events and current events, of milestones and commemorations, and is pleased that the balance in his life is tipped in favor of the good.
“Sounds like you’ll have quite the weekend,” I offer.
He doesn’t say anything in response. Maybe he’s just running through his daughter’s life, thinking about all the times she’s surprised him, beginning with her birth. So much joy on a day when joy was in short supply. A new life when so much life was taken. A new beginning when it felt as though the world were ending.
“Well,” I say. “I’ve got to run.”
“All right now,” he responds with joy in his voice.
“Congrats again.”
“Thank you.”
If that vestibule were indeed a confessional, I don’t know who the confessor was - me or the man whose daughter was getting married the next day. I had just run in to get some cash and check my balances. I didn’t go in for conversation, and certainly not for a confession.
Still, there was something sacred in that exchange with this man whose name I never thought to ask. Some sense of rebirth, of renewal for a life born on 9/11 now come of age and writing a new chapter not only in her life, but in the lives of her loved ones as well.
I’m glad this proud father shared this story with me, and included that part about 9/11. Little could he have possibly known how impactful that day was to me, how it came to shape so much of what has since transpired in my life. His story felt like some triumph of goodness over evil, of joy over despair, of love over hate.
Thank you for reading my latest installment of “25 Weeks to 25 Years,” a 25 week series leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 later this year.
Prior installments include:
June 19: Pakistan, Pakistanis, and Pakistani
June 12: Three Months Before 9/11
June 5: D-Day, Pearl Harbor, 9/11
May 29: Pop, The Discoverers, and a Cape You’ve Never Heard Of
May 22: Memory Palace and Four Freedoms
May 15: McCullough and Memory
May 8: Dostoevsky and the Legacy of 9/11
May 1: On the Road to bin Laden’s House
April 24: Here Comes the Hard Part
April 17: The Boston Marathon and the BPL
April 10: A Pilgrimage to Ground Zero
April 3: The Other Twin Towers
March 27: 47 Years On From the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
March 20: The Iraq War - 23 Years Later
March 17: 25 Weeks to 25 Years
Just think—if you’d gotten there five minutes earlier or later you would have missed that story. Turns out confessions can be positive too, eh? I’m glad you were there to take his. Thanks for sharing it.