On 9/11, which is, alas, my birthday, I was in New York about to head to Nashville to attend a 70th birthday party for George Jones (which I figured would be better than any party I could throw for myself). Before I left, though, I had promised a close friend I’d have breakfast at the St. Regis with an older friend of hers in town from Mexico City. I was in a cab in the usual slow Fifth Avenue traffic, and at a light, both the driver and I saw the fireball at the top of the first tower. (I hadn’t realized until that moment how very visible both towers were from points all over Manhattan.) He rolled down his window and another driver told us he was hearing on the radio that a small plane had flown into it.

A bit rattled, I went into the hotel dining room and met this lovely genteel woman. Halfway through my second cup of coffee, a friend rang my cell to tell me about the Pentagon. At that point I knew we weren’t talking about a small plane anymore. I told my uncomprehending breakfast companion to go back to her room, that her husband would be watching CNN in Mexico and he would want to reach her.

When I got outside there was no traffic on Fifth Avenue, even that far up (53rd Street). Cars had pulled over, people were listening to their radios, pedestrians crowded the streets. I began walking, fast, back uptown, toward home. I was trying to dial my then-boyfriend, now-husband in New Orleans to find out what the hell was happening (I figured he’d know a lot more than I did from TV) when a man grabbed my arm and spun me around and the two of us stood there holding onto each other as the tower literally disappeared before our eyes.

Every time I think of that moment my heart is in my throat again. It’s that feeling of watching something so, so much bigger than you or anything you’ve ever seen before and somehow comprehending the urgency and sheer awfulness of it even though there are no words. I will never forget that man, my brief companion.

When I got back uptown, without even thinking I went straight to my butcher and bought two enormous tenderloins (this is my mother in me — when something horrible happens or somebody dies, she cooks a tenderloin). When I got home, friends began pouring in and we sat glued to the TV (it was Peter Jennings — as Cynthia said, he was pitch-perfect that day). At one point I left the apartment to get something — cigarettes probably, as all of us reformed smokers were suddenly puffing away — and the sidewalks were full of families with dogs and baby strollers spilling out of cafés. I realized that like me, they were desperate for communion with other folks, to cling to normalcy (even though nothing was remotely normal), to somehow reiterate the fact that they were still alive.

There were cops everywhere and at my corner, 78th and Third Avenue, a couple of them were stopping crosstown traffic so that a fire truck carrying a crew returning from the rubble could get through. The men were soot-covered and stone-faced and a huge flag flew from the top of the engine. Hundreds of people were suddenly quiet and it was the first time I really cried. That’s what stays with me: the flag, our flag, and the extraordinary heroism of ordinary Americans doing their jobs that day.