I remember riding home on the train last night after reading New York is being targeted for more attacks. What a surprise.  

I--and as I suspect other New Yorkers and lovers of freedom--feel this threat most every day. Sure, there are days when it's not in the air, but not often. Each landmark holds new beauty, precious sentimentality. Each skyscraper a possession handed down from generation to generation like jewelry.  

I stood and looked uptown and then downtown last night before heading home to Brooklyn. I looked from the 12th floor of the building I work at on Sixth Avenue. I looked to the west, toward the east, to the north and finally to the south.  

And I let the buildings speak.  

"We will always be here," they said. "Even if they take one or two or more of us out, we will always be here. Even if they take you out, your loved ones, your enemies, the man at the fruit stand, the coffee cart men, the babies, the mothers, the parks, the sick, the dying, we will still be here."  

"But I want you here, always", I said. "Strong and as tall as you are tonight."  

"We will be."  

"But I want you safe, Lady Liberty safe, not a finger laid on her."  

"She will be."  

"I want the Chrysler Building and the Empire State never touched!"  

"They won't be."  

"Brooklyn Bridge!"  

"She won't be."  

"Can you promise me?"  

"Of course. Just look at the darkness of this night. Look at it. See the beauty swirling around us and cling to that. Fight for that. Be at peace with that."  

So I went home. Rode the train home. And I looked at us, all of us, here, for the duration. What a way to go.

Author's Biography

Sheela Wolford is fromer Texan and today is a writer living in Brooklyn since 1997. 

The mother of two stellar daughters, Leila, 18 and Sarah, 14, Sheela, at the age of 41, left West Texas for New York to find herself. And oddly enough, she did.  

E-mail Sheela at reedie100@aol.com 

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