A Day to Dance or Weep?
By AIMEE LEE BALL
Perhaps it is needless to say: the birthday was forgotten.
Every year since, there is a strange confluence of events for those born on Sept. 11. It might be a point of pride to share a birthday with literary lions (D. H. Lawrence and O. Henry) or celebrities (Maria Bartiromo, Brian De Palma, Valentino and Moby), but sharing the day with a national tragedy is a conundrum.
Many believe that it’s inappropriate to be festive while the rest of the country observes a somber anniversary. Every time they fill out a form at a doctor’s office, show a driver’s license to rent a car, clear passport control at the airport or otherwise present identification, they get a quizzical response, somewhere between sympathy and shock.
“I preface showing my ID by saying, ‘It’s a strange birthday,’ ” said Ms. Foote, a gift-bag designer, who attends a memorial service every year on Sept. 11 before she feels entitled to celebrate. “I sort of apologize for that day. And I always get ‘The Look.’ ”
The phenomenon is perhaps akin to a Dec. 7 birthday for an earlier generation, but unlike Pearl Harbor, 9/11 is an event known by the date it occurred, forming an immediate visceral association.
Some people born on Sept. 11 deflect attention with the European calendar format: day before month. Obstetricians report women due to deliver on Sept. 11 who insist on scheduling an earlier C-section to avoid saddling their child with a tainted birthday. At P.S. 22 in Staten Island, children born on Sept. 11 made a poignant video declaring that their birthday had been “taken away” and “ruined.”
The day of the attack was the 50th birthday of Holly Hotchner, director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and a large party was planned, with guests from around the world. Many of them never made it, once the airports shut down. “And nobody felt like a party,” Ms. Hotchner said.
Instead, she bought a big tin of caviar and a quantity of vodka. “And that is a tradition I’ve continued,” she said, “although the tin has gotten smaller — I spent too much that year.” But she regrets that she cannot yet make a pilgrimage to a memorial garden at the site of the trade center, which remains essentially a hole in the ground. “It would be comforting to go down there on my birthday,” she said, “and see that wounds had been healed.”
New Yorkers may assume squatters’ rights to the heartbreak of that day, but a Sept. 11 birthday can feel stigmatized in any part of the country. Deborah Newmyer, a TV and film producer in Los Angeles, will continue her tradition of lunch with beloved female friends on her 52nd birthday this year. “But I’ve never claimed the date back as my birthday,” she said. “It’s always overshadowed by something grander than my coming into the world.”
Barbara Rambo, a management consultant in San Francisco, had once worked in Tower Two and spent the early hours of her 49th birthday watching that building crumble. “Being 3,000 miles away made the feeling of helplessness grow exponentially,” she said.
Her “cake” that year: brownies made by her son for a sidewalk bake sale to benefit the families of firefighters who died in the rescue effort. Several weeks later, 9-year-old Stewart Goossens presented Engine Company 3 in Manhattan with a check for $457.93. “I lost a lot friends on 9/11,” Ms. Rambo said, “so every year part of that day is spent thinking about them.”
On the day of the attack, G. Parker Johnson was having a birthday breakfast with cousins at a greasy spoon in his hometown, Atlanta. “While I was eating, there were six missed calls and four messages on my cellphone,” he said. “I thought they’d be birthday greetings, but they were all saying basically, ‘Dude, are you watching this?’ ”
“Every birthday since then has been a more sober experience than it otherwise would be,” said Mr. Johnson, now 42 and a music producer in Lyons, Colo. “It’s hard to celebrate when you know thousands of people are directly mourning a loss, and millions of others are mourning indirectly. I did not have a big blowout 40th birthday because of 9/11. It’s the 800-pound gorilla in the corner.”
Hiding under the covers on his birthday makes no sense to Kareem Collie, a graphic designer from Brooklyn who will turn 36 this Sept. 11. “I recognize what took place that day, but I don’t internalize it,” he said. “When I look back on 9/11, it’s an event that happened on one day in the monumental number of birthdays I hope to have in my life,” he said. “That day does not represent me, it represents a horrible event.”
Others refuse any restraint out of a conviction that they must not hand the terrorists even the tiniest victory. “My birthday has always been my favorite holiday because it’s all about me,” said Lara Goerlitz, a catering manager at the Houstonian Hotel in Houston. “I worked nights at the time of the attack, and I was sleeping in that morning, but my phone kept ringing. I finally answered a call from one of my best friends, who was sobbing. My birthday was really an afterthought that year.”
But in the ensuing decade, Ms. Goerlitz has reclaimed her party-girl mode with a vengeance, and for her 40th birthday this year will take a dream trip to Europe. “The most profound effect on me from the World Trade Center was realizing how short life is,” she said. “What I took from it was: carpe diem.”
Sometimes an effort to celebrate “normally” backfires. Jennifer Parenti, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, was stationed in Boston on the first anniversary of 9/11, which was her 29th birthday.
“We had a fairly solemn memorial service at the time the plane had hit the Pentagon,” she said. “One of our bosses gave a speech, and then he said, ‘Now everybody wish Jennifer a happy birthday!’ And they had cake. It felt rather weird.”
And sometimes a little child shall lead them. When Dahlia Gruen was sent home from school in Boston on the day of the attack and realized that her parents weren’t at work, she first thought they’d come home early to celebrate her 10th birthday.
“There were rumors about an airplane crash,” she said, “but it didn’t really sink in.” The following year, she commemorated the day as a true child of the digital age: She created a Web site called Birthday Spirit, encouraging fellow Sept. 11 birthday babies to take a cake to their local firehouse. “I wanted to change the way I celebrate,” said Ms. Gruen, now a freshman at Northwestern University, “to do some good.” Another site called the Philanthropic Family suggests celebrating a Sept. 11 birthday with a day of service or charitable donation.
The day of the attack was to be Catherine Karp’s 30th birthday, with classical connotations of imminent decrepitude. “It’s the first birthday that lets you buy black plates at the party store,” said Ms. Karp, a novelist in Portland, Ore.
She has briefly considered celebrating her birthday on Sept. 10 or 12. “But that doesn’t feel right,” she said. “The shadow of the day is always there and always will be there, but I’m not going to let anybody take the day away.”
Next year, her 40th birthday will coincide with the 10th anniversary at ground zero. “I don’t feel the huge dread I might have felt otherwise,” Ms. Karp said. “The events of that day made aging seem like such a minor worry.”
Indulging in black humor, Mark Pener suggested that “the tragedy of turning 40” this Sept. 11 will fit the somber mood of the day. “Sometimes I tell people that I’ve legally changed my birthday,” said Mr. Pener, a construction consultant in Brookline, Mass.
“I wish it were possible, maybe through an act of Congress,” he said. “My birthdays are always pretty low key, but this year I think there’s something secret brewing with my family. Maybe they’re changing my birthday by entering me in the witness protection program.”
Choosing one’s birthday may not be an option, but there are 365 choices for a wedding day, and Elizabeth Brown-Inz chose Sept. 11 for her marriage to John Kingman. “We wanted the wedding on a Saturday in warm weather, and everything was booked for June, July and August,” said Ms. Brown-Inz, the membership manager at the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. “I’m not superstitious, and I decided 9/11 was fine.”
It became even finer when she discovered that the date was actually her late grandparents’ anniversary, and their legacy seemed to confer a welcome sanction for Ms. Brown-Inz.
Even if she’s not superstitious.
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