By now, the New York skyline has adjusted in the eyes of TV viewers across the nation. The Twin Towers, once a defining part of that image, are but a memory, replaced by the devastation of Ground Zero. But this is not television. And for New York students who have returned home since the collapse of the towers, the images flashed so many times on television are a stark reality.
Going home for winter break isn't going to be quite the same this year for Sireeda Miller. The junior lives in lower Manhattan with her family, and could once see the World Trade Center from her bedroom window. From the windows of the apartment, her stepfather watched the planes crash into the towers. He was close enough to see people jumping from the burning towers.
No surprise, then, that when Miller returned home for the first time after the attacks, the shades in every window of the apartment were drawn.
"My family used to always have the shades up, because we had a view of the Manhattan skyline," she said. "When I went into my bedroom for the first time, I pulled up the shade and there was just a huge void. Everything looked so much bigger without the towers."
The view from her bedroom window was the first glimpse Miller got of the changed skyline. Walking to her apartment from the train station with her friends for the first time after Sept. 11, she refused to look up.
"I just didn't want to see it. It's just not right," she said. "I was scared to see how it would look." Prior to her Columbus Day weekend visit, Miller said she had had nightmares about what her neighborhood would look like. And the view that panned out from her window was far worse than any scene her imagination could have conjured.
"You don't really want to look over there because you realize that you are basically looking at a grave site. Everyone who lives around me had their shades drawn all the time," Miller said. "I couldn't go to sleep unless my shade was drawn, and even in the morning, I only pulled the shade up enough to see the park across from my building."
Her lower Manhattan home, ten blocks away from the Twin Towers, offered little escape from the devastation that October weekend. Smoke still filled the air and the blocks surrounding her apartment were shut down for weeks. Transportation was especially difficult - for weeks, people in the area had no access to taxis, buses, or trains.
Miller visited Ground Zero twice on the second day of her visit. "It was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my whole life," she said. "As you walk toward it, the smell keeps getting stronger and stronger, and there were so many people walking in the same direction, it was like a pilgrimage."
Two weeks after her initial visit, Miller went home again, and this time, she brought a video camera to get footage of Ground Zero for TUTV.
"The smell was still there, and they still hadn't fixed the TV stations," Miller said. "When I went back for Thanksgiving break, they had finally fixed it, but until then, they had only been getting two stations."
Two weekends ago, during Thanksgiving, Miller decided against visiting Ground Zero, and doesn't think that she'll be going back during the winter break. "It scared me a lot. Just looking out the window is hard enough," she said. "I just can't handle it - three times is enough for me."
For Miller, normalcy is a thing of the past. Talk about "going back to normal" bothers her, she said, because it's not really possible.
"How can we, if you can't get back to work, and you can't get around the city?" she said. "A lot of stores are still closed, or out of business. Everyone's selling flags on the streets... there are police everywhere, and cars have to be searched to go through certain parts of Manhattan."
Among other things, Miller's shopping habits are going to be different this year. She and her friends used to go to the mall inside the World Trade Center to do their holiday shopping. While to traveling to SoHo for shopping won't be a hassle, it reminds her that the holidays just won't be the same this year.
"I know you're supposed to be happy and joyful this time of the year, but every time you look out the window, you ask yourself how you can be happy when so many people aren't going to be with their families this year," Miller said.
She has decided not to study abroad next semester, but hasn't let the events of this fall drive her away from the home she loves. If anything, it seems that the attacks have reinforced her New York pride.
"I'm going to be in New York for the rest of my life," Miller said. "I won't move - my place will always be in New York City."
Despite her resolve to stay true to her hometown, she wouldn't want to see the Twin Towers rebuilt. "All my memories are set on the way it was before. I always have to remember how it looked before. I just couldn't handle seeing it again - they can't rebuild it like nothing had ever happened. You can't replace the Twin Towers."
Alexis Margolin's home isn't as close to the World Trade Center as is Miller's, but going back was similarly distressing. When the sophomore returned to her Long Island house two weeks after the attacks, her town had been affected more deeply than she had predicted. Police tape blocked off a house in her neighborhood, for fear that it might have housed suspected terrorists. Local churches held memorial services every day for victims. And the view just wasn't the same.
"My town was totally turned upside down," Margolin said. "When I went home, it was like being in a different place."
The sophomore said that seeing the destruction in person helped her put the situation into perspective. Although she does not live in the heart of New York City, being there helped her realize what her town was going through.
"A lot of people from my town were in the buildings. I think we lost about 40 people," Margolin said. "Ground Zero was covered in dust and it was packed, so many people were just standing there."
Margolin took a train back to Tufts after her visit and said that seeing the New York skyline without the Twin Towers had an impact on all the passengers. "Everyone was really quiet and looking out the window," she said.
For that reason, she said she would like to see the World Trade Center rebuilt sometime in the future.
"The skyline is so empty. It's really depressing, trying to remember exactly where the World Trade Center was - it was such a huge part of the skyline."
Margolin did not return to New York for Thanksgiving break, but will be heading home in a couple weeks. And getting accustomed to life in New York for a month is going to be difficult, she said.
"Here it's not something I think about all the time, but when I go home, I feel like it will always be on my mind," she said. "I don't really know what to expect."
