You have to eat and keep going.
| |  | | A Seductive, Grown-Up Version of Grilled Cheese | | | | | "'You probably need to eat something,' the baker said. 'I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,' he said."
—Raymond Carver, "A Small, Good Thing"
Yes, I was there. I was in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was in an office building 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center, near a large window with a perfect, unobstructed view. I could tell you what I saw from that window. I couldn't accurately tell you what it felt like. They say "never forget," but there are some things I wish I could forget.
Let me tell you instead about the open-faced peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwich that welcomed me home.
There was a lot of confusion that morning. It took a leap of faith to leave the building after the attacks, exposing myself to who-knows-what. I left with my colleague, Colleen. All the subways were shut down, so we headed all the way back to Brooklyn on foot. We joined streams of people doing the same. Along the way I saw a familiar figure emerging like a ghost. It was my friend Karen, covered from head to toe in ashes. Earlier that morning she had dropped her son off at school a couple blocks away from the site. After hours of frantic calling she had just finally learned that friends had collected her son and ushered him to safety.
Colleen and I kept going, eventually walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Strangers had gathered on the other side to greet us with bottles of water and that particular kind of camaraderie you get from fellow New Yorkers. That I want to remember.
We finally arrived at my Park Slope stoop. Colleen still had a ways to go, but she stopped with me. My then-husband Lane, who will always be family, sat us down and made us the most comforting and delicious thing he could make. He made us his special open-face sandwich: Soft sourdough with chunky peanut butter, slathered with a deep, indigo pool of blueberry preserves.
It's a sandwich Lane made often, this generous and simple meal—an anchor into the here and now, into the familiar. We ate to keep going. And eating it was a small, good thing at such a time. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Spruce Eats on YouTube | | | | | | | | | |
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