The long day

do not often discuss the subject, but 9/11 was the worst of days for my family. I was in the North Tower on the 47th floor when the plane hit, my in-laws lived less than 150 yards away from the South Tower, and my husband spent the entire day searching for any of us through Ground Zero, and then in various evacuation sites in New Jersey.

I had been in the Trade Center during the 1993 bombing, but this was different, very different.

When the plane hit, rocking the entire building, I grabbed my business partner and said we had to get out immediately. We walked down the stairwell; everyone was calm and many were assisting others. Coming up were first responders. I had no idea that few, if any, would make the return trip. When I got to the bottom we were told to run across the plaza to avoid lethal debris, including those who jumped. I then made my way to a gym on Wall Street.

When the first Tower came down, people streamed into the gym to find safety, screaming and covered in dust. I was directly across the street from the Stock Exchange, and fearing that this, too, could be a target, I headed out into the dust cloud, through Chinatown to the East River. Stopping at one point to change from my shirt into a t-shirt, I was instructed by a policeman that I could not do that in public. Well, I could and I did. I made my way to the

Manhattan Bridge, crossed over into Brooklyn, and then walked to my home.

Meanwhile, my in-laws had gone down to the courtyard of their building when the first Tower fell. My father-in-law pushed his wife, who was barely ambulatory, into a dentist’s office. He gave them masks and assisted them to an evacuation boat, where they were transported to New Jersey. He almost certainly saved their lives. My husband Mark was standing outside our Brooklyn apartment building when the South Tower exploded in a shower of flames and glass. He immediately ran to the subway, where he took one of the last trains into Manhattan. Exhausted and out of breath, he sat down in a shoe repair shop a couple of blocks from the Trade Center and used a land line to call his parents. I had called them earlier to tell them I was all right, and they mistakenly believed I was coming to them. They told this to Mark, and when the first Tower came down a few minutes later, he thought I was caught in the collapse and was dead. He left the repair shop when he realized that one of the employees was mopping up a large puddle of blood. He went North to his development project in Tribeca, a few blocks away.

When the second Tower came down he could reach none of us, and walked down to Ground Zero to find someone, anyone. At Ground Zero he walked through inches of grey dust, shattered windows and mourning responders huddled together. If one could experience a nuclear winter, this was what it would be like. He, too, ended up on a boat to New Jersey where he spent the rest of the day moving from place to place until he was able to get a train into Manhattan. He arrived at 6 p.m., dirty, hungry, and weeping with gratitude to see me. His parents had been picked up by a cousin, and by evening we were all safe. But not all stories had such a happy ending. The son of my partner was caught on a high floor above the impact zone and perished when the building came down. My family’s day was horrible, but his was tragic.

It has been 20 years since 9/11 and it no longer haunts our dreams. Life moves on for everyone.

But its impact has never left us, even as the event itself has receded into history. We stayed in New York long enough to see its rebirth, and moved to Boulder in 2014.

It is funny, but despite the fact that the Twin Towers were widely regarded as hideous by most New Yorkers, we missed them when they were gone. In their place are glittering new towers, a testament to the wealth and resilience of New York. But we would give much to see those ugly old buildings again, even once.

Joan Zimmerman lives in Boulder and is the wife of City Councilperson Mark Wallach, who is currently running for re-election.