Ground Zero is surprisingly cheerful on this night. Perhaps it’s because no one has to pass through security anymore to get in here, or because the first forty floors of the adjacent New World Trade Center are lit up with office lights, all hopeful signs of a return to normalcy. People are lying on the grass, unsure whether to gaze at the blue lights pointing skyward, or toward the bustling crowds gathered around both fountains.
The half finished monument, which looks like a skeleton of a T-Rex for now, yields showers of orange sparks due to the construction that’s taking place even at this late hour, but no one on the ground flinches. No one here is scared. The metal detectors are gone. The police are everywhere, but are mostly being asked to pose for pictures. Just maybe, the post-9/11 paranoia that arguably did more damage to this nation than the attack itself is finally fading.
What briefly appears to be a random scuffle instead turns out to be an overly emphatic embrace between two retired firefighters who acknowledge they haven’t seen each other in years. One points to the blue lights in the sky and then kisses the other on the cheek, and you get the feeling they were both here on that day. Across the street at O’Hara’s pub, policemen and firefighters and soldiers are ushered in the door, and it’s clear no one is getting in without a uniform.
No one is looking at their phones on this night, but instead using them to take pictures from every angle. The names on the monument are so draped with flowers, flags, pictures, ribbons, candles and other personal items left by loved ones or strangers, that some of the names are difficult to read. No one here tonight has forgotten what happened here. But unlike years past, when a visit to the Ground Zero fountains was a quiet and solemn affair, this felt almost celebratory. The Fourth of July this was not. But nor was it a funeral.
By this day next year the monument will be finished, the museum will be open, and the observation deck atop the Freedom Tower will be accessible. That makes tonight the final 9/11 which will bear any hint of the construction work which has turned two a pair of deadly holes in the ground into a soaring memorial. And in that sense the optimism of the people at Ground Zero on this night seems fitting indeed.
