This is a Romanov. She is strikingly beautiful. Though she is not the woman whose photograph would later captivate me, when I saw this image of Princess Olga and she took my breath away...I felt she was a good way to convey how I felt the day I DID see the visage of the stranger on the other end of the phone.

Dear Ether,

Somewhere in Odessa there is a photograph of me.  It might be stored away gently in a envelope.  It may be crudely covered in rubble in a dump.  But somewhere…..somewhere in the Ukraine there is a snapshot of me taken when I was in my mid 20’s.

The original keeper of the photo was a woman I never met.  She spoke no English and I no Russian.  My glossy print sat on her mantelpiece for about 5 years in her modest studio flat.  It shared space with images of her grandchildren, husband and daughter and a few tattered black and white photos that survived the war.

English gent is half Russian.  His mother is this woman’s daughter.  To me she was only known as Babushka.

I only spoke to her a few times on the phone.  I muttered foolish statements that English gent had taught me.  “Ya Loo-Bloo Tibia” (I love you).  She laughed with good nature into the phone and repeated. “Ya Loo-Bloo Tibia Tour-Jah” (I love you too).  It felt sad that I was crippled by language and couldn’t communicate with a woman who I knew had a tremendous history and warmth.  I had never been handicapped by language before—in fact, it was something I was so good at.  I always handed over the receiver feeling like a puppet who’d just done her job entertaining.

One day, I asked to see her photograph during a visit to English gent’s house.  His clan are a family of pale, fair-haired, light eyed, slim people.  Babushka was in her twenties in the photo I was shown.  She couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall.  She had coffee-colored hair and brown pupils. I know it seems crazy, but I felt a sudden closeness to her.  I felt she was from my stock.  That English gent’s genes had all come from his father’s UK side (and even his mother was shockingly fair—she didn’t resemble Babushka at all).  Though I’m much taller, we were both the dark horses.  I asked English gent’s mom if I could send Babushka MY photo.  I felt if that made me feel a connection to her where words couldn’t, maybe my photo could create the same spark.

When she received my photo, Gent told me she cried.  That she “understood.”  She loved my dark looks—and it made her so happy that he was with someone who reminded her of her heritage.  After that, I made sure no longer to be a marionette on the phone but to have a translator and convey true feelings across the line.

But, as we all know, time is a harsh enemy.  And she was not young.  She no longer could speak on the phone or read letters.  And then she died.  When English gent’s mother went to her flat for the last time, she said she noticed my photo immediately.  It stood out more than the others and looked as though it had been fingered the most.  It was slightly dog-eared and had many fingerprints on its finish.  I like to think that she passed it around for many to see.  By the time Gent’s mom came back to clean the flat, the mantle had been tidied and to this day, those pictures have never resurfaced.

Though we never got to know each other, when we looked into one another’s eyes from so far away, we had an understanding.  I often wonder what my photo got to see in her little flat?  I wonder what aromas surrounded it as she cooked her traditional meals?

Wherever I am in Odessa, decaying in a landfill or safe in a drawer, at least I can say for a moment in time a picture spoke a thousand words for both of us.

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365

"Death is always, under all circumstances, a tragedy, for if it is not then it means that life has become one." Theodore Roosevelt

Dear Ethers,

I was there.  I was in New York City.  I was 21 years old and had a plane ticket booked to leave out of JFK on American Airlines for September 13^th to London.   

Tuesday.  I remember the ceaseless noise of sirens.  Trash floating in the street.  The city a barren wasteland.  

Papers plastered everywhere on every possible surface with faces and names scrawled underneath begging for any information about loved ones.  College kids my age.  I stared at a picture of a boy.  It was a recent photo.  It said he was on a high floor.  I knew he was dead.  He looked so alive in the photo.  Handsome, even.  But the shaky pen on the flyer begged for information.  His picture was one of thousands on walls, on lamp posts, across the city.  I fingered these papers.  Hopeless cries for help, dirty and dusty from other fingerprints that had done exactly what I had just done—tried to touch their souls. 

I sat on a train where a couple had a list of hospitals that they were checking off looking for their daughter (this is what I could gather from their conversation).  It was grim.  They had many tick marks with X’s and not many hospitals left.  

The TV was relentless with coverage.  No one looked each other in the eye and if you did catch someone, it was a glazed over stare or a reddened, tear filled orb, exhausted from crying. 

No one understood.  The world had changed forever. 

I walked passed a firehouse that had candles burning for the men they lost.  

People clapped on the streets when a police car or a fire truck blazed by.

American flags were everywhere—it was a sea of red, white and blue.  But mainly blue. 

8 years.  Those interns would have been college graduates.  Some men and women might have been retired.  Many of those people might have been married and have had children.  

It used to haunt me.  The vision of that man who jumped out of the window.  What must he have been thinking?  Can you imagine having to decide to burn alive or jump to your death?  All he did was go into work. 

And then what about the woman who called in sick that day and never recovered? She still shakes everyday and is on disability from post-traumatic stress syndrome.  She believed it was her day to die and never forgave herself for not being in that building. 

I was one of 9 people who sat on the American Airlines 777 plane that finally got clearance to leave on September 19^th, 2001.  We all hoped that 777 was an omen.  I was grateful to leave.  I couldn’t bear the heaviness in the air anymore.  I couldn’t breathe from the pain and the loss.  

Being an American on September 10^th 2001 and being an American on September 11, 2001 was a transformation that will resonate with me for the rest of my life.  

I won’t say anything that anyone else hasn’t today.  But I felt it was essential to say my piece and honor those who perished.  Those who were strapped to their seats in horror when they hit the Pentagon.  Those who were brave and fought to their last breath to try and save their lives and their fellow man by rushing the pilot of that United plane.  Those who died in the towering inferno that was the World Trade Center.  The brave servicemen who went into that building knowing that they probably wouldn’t come out alive and put their lives aside to try and protect and serve.  

I am not a religious person.  It’s days like September 11^th that made me give up on that a LONG time ago.  But for those who perished and were pious—and for those whose families believe, I want to say that I hope that your loved ones are in heaven and are at peace.  And if I had a wish for you today it would be that you could touch those who you lost again and say good-bye one last time.  To have one last day.  To have it be September 10^th, 2001 again. 

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365