The Walls
				Missing Persons
	When the walls first started appearing all over the city, they were large-scale Missing Persons flyers, akin to the ones that you regularly see on telephone poles and light posts in the city, and on milk cartons and mail flyers out in the suburbs. Most of them identified the person, the company and floor of the tower in which they worked, what they were wearing and where they were last seen. There are scattered individual pictures on poles, but most are clustered together. There are walls outside the Post Office, in the subway stations and bus terminals. The walls outside the Pier 94 Family Assistance Center were the ones that I passed daily when entering and exiting the Center. Immediately after the collapses, the city mobilized to set up this center for the families, still clinging to hope and waiting for word of people rescued from the rubble. This is as close as the media are allowed to get to the Center, and they have taken to setting up cameras here. The pictures stretch endlessly, and some of the pictures appear repeatedly.  One of these is seen every few feet, a picture of an exotic-looking young woman with dark black hair. I imagined a loved one frantically posting them, as if the sheer number of flyers could somehow increase the chances of her being found alive. The pictures are a cross-section of New York and of America. The faces are white and black, Asian and Hispanic, young and old, executives and service workers, citizens and immigrants, fathers and mothers, sons, and daughters, brothers and sisters, coworkers and friends. A few pictures are formal portraits, some show smiling vacationers or mothers holding their children. Some phrases are repeated over and over, last seen at Cantor Fitzgerald, Morgan Stanley, Windows on the World, 101st floor, 95th floor. At first the walls reflected hope. Notes of encouragement for the rescue workers are penned here, thanking them for their tireless efforts. They too see the wall, passing it on the way inside to get a hot meal. They no longer stop to read the notes. Weeks after the collapse, the notes seemed to have taken a condemnatory tone. One implores "please don't stop until you find my Daddy". Not long after the tragedy, the outside walls were covered with sheets of plastic to protect them from the wind and the rain. They had taken on the role of memorial sites.  Candles are lit at the base of the wall.  Bouquets of flowers wilt here. A birth announcement and picture of a newborn baby are added next to the picture of the father she will never meet. I visit the inner wall at the Family Assistance Center every time I am there. This is where the families waited in the first week after the attacks, when there was hope that survivors would be found. The pictures here are not covered in plastic, and handwritten notes surround each one. Many are written with a purple pen that must have been passed from person to person for hours. The notes chronicle the progression from hope for a miracle to bargaining with God, from the realization that the loved one would not be found to expressions of profound fresh grief. Next to the picture of a young man: "Danny, you still need to teach me how to water-ski". Next to another, "Ha ha, very funny, you can come home now".  Many notes are in Spanish, and other languages are also seen. One note brings tears to my eyes, and yet I am drawn to return each time I am here. Here a young woman wrote, "I'll wait for you forever". At some point in the days following September 11, as hope dimmed and faded and was finally extinguished, she returned to cross out the words "wait for" and replace them with "love", "I'll love you forever". On the floor beneath this wall sit hundreds of Teddy Bears, and this corridor is called The Teddy Bear Walk. The families of the victims of the Oklahoma City truck bombing sent these bears, and each bear has a note attached to it. Those who pass each other on Teddy Bear Walk do so silently. We touch a picture here, a note there, feel the softness of a bear or two, and cry for the lost. The wall closest to Ground Zero is only a block away from the rubble, but it is the most formal and nicest one.  This is the tribute site for the fire, police and emergency services personnel lost in the World Trade Center attacks. This wall is right on the waterfront, at the yacht basin, and is covered by a white canvas canopy. Here there are tributes sent by departments from around the country and the world. Large funeral sprays still stand here. They must have been beautiful when in bloom, and still show the shape of the Maltese Cross or NYPD shield, the colors subdued now that the flowers, like those they honor, are dead. In addition to the wall, there is a ledge that holds Teddy Bears, candles, and helmets and badges from around the world. Each department has its own plaque bearing the pictures of those lost: the Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services, Police Department, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and FBI. What is most striking to me is the size of the pictures. The FBI lost two members, and their pictures are close to a school portrait size. The Port Authority and New York Police Department lost several dozen each, and wallet-sized pictures are placed in several rows on their plaques. The Fire Department plaque is much bigger than the others, the size of a piece of poster board, and the sheer magnitude of their loss hits home. The pictures are tiny now, the size of postage stamps, yet the pictures march on relentlessly.  Row after row of faces, just big enough to make out some detail. Most are in dress uniform. Some company names are repeated over and over, Engine Co. 6, Ladder Co. 9, Ladder Co. 118. I do the mental math, counting how many tiny pictures.  Twenty across each row, and there are almost twenty rows. A sheet of postage stamps this size would cost $116. A dozen or so people come by while we are here. A young woman comes crying softly; her attention focused on one of the tiny pictures.  We move away to give her room to grieve. As we leave the memorial and head back up to the street, my husband, a federal firefighter, meets a technical advisor for the TV show Third Watch, who is accompanying the children of a battalion chief lost in the attacks. The four children are all in their teens and twenties.  We wait as he speaks briefly with them and hands them a patch from his fire department, the equivalent of a condolence card. We have come here on a day off, accompanying friends who wanted to visit the site. Although it is January, it is a lovely day, sunny and warm. We take group pictures in front of the wall, and later my friend sends me copies. These are the only pictures I have of myself in the city. In one we are smiling a bit, in the other more somber. I prefer the somber one.

The Outer Wall

The Inner Wall

The Tribute Wall