A September trip to Ithaca helps this alumna find hope, comfort, and a sense of peace.

by Sima Weinsaft Matthes '89

Although I am grateful to say that those closest to me were spared in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (and miraculously, out of 150 people I work with, not one lost an immediate family member or friend), I’ve been acutely aware that the stone was thrown into the water not far off my own shore. I’ve felt the ripples, like so many in the New York metropolitan area: a second cousin, a friend’s son, a classmate --- numbers that expanded exponentially with every day that went by, and every minute filled with greater uncertainty despite the declarations and platitudes of those who claim to lead us.

In the wake of this tragedy I found myself in Ithaca. Months ago, my husband and I had decided to drive to Ithaca with another couple after the wedding of a sorority sister in Binghamton on Friday, September 14. We figured we’d drive to Ithaca after the wedding, and on Saturday I’d show him around the place I "grew up."

Being in Ithaca was a tonic for my soul, so seared by the pictures, by the frantic phone calls and e-mails to make sure my friends and family were okay, by the sheer horror of it all, compounded minute by minute. Standing on the Ithaca Commons, where the community rallied for peaceful solutions, wandering an eerily quiet campus from the chapel to the Towers to the Quads, doing things that seemed familiar but were somehow different as an adult, like eating at Joe’s or Moosewood, in some small way helped me put some joy into the empty spaces in my heart that might otherwise have been filled with rage or vengeful thoughts. When I ran into a friend from the alumni association at DeWitt Mall, we hugged and held on for a long time. The last time I’d seen her was at my wedding nearly two years ago, but finding the familiar where you least expect it was comforting for both of us.

To see life going on in a community that must have also felt the losses was comforting --- and inspirational. When we decided to stay another day, I remarked, "This is like being in Never-Never Land. This is where I was last a child, but now I have no classes or schoolwork and I have money in my wallet." My traveling companions (one an IC grad, one from Cornell) knew exactly what I meant.

I was a freshman when the Challenger exploded. In what was then the Egbert Union, I watched the images over and over again on television. I was a senior when Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. I watched, horrified, as families at the airport received the news that would change their lives. At the time of each event I was struck by the grief, the shock, and our resilience as a nation.

I know that neither event --- or even both together --- rise to the level of this tragedy. I believe we have finally lost our innocence.

Sitting on the swings on the shore of Lake Cayuga on the afternoon of Sunday, September 16, staring out onto the lake on a perfect late-summer afternoon, watching the boats, the people playing with their kids, the students sketching, reading, and just basking in the sun, the water rippling behind them, I suddenly began to cry. Nothing here seemed changed, even though our world was so dramatically different. I literally felt my innocence slip away . . . my simple sense of security drowning in tears.

On a national, indeed global, scale, things have changed dramatically, of course. And on a more intimate scale, things have changed as well. My own priorities are now firmly in order. I know that when I crawl into bed at night knowing my family and friends are fine, and I snuggle in with the cat, the dog, and my husband, nothing else matters. Not the job, not the house, not the gray hairs, not the jerk who cut me off on the way home, not the long wait on the phone for an answer to a simple question about my electric bill.

From this tragedy I have learned that in the end, kindness matters most. I hope that I have learned to be kinder. I keep thinking of the young man on that doomed flight that crashed in Pennsylvania who, in the last moments of his life, after declaring his love for his wife and his children, said to his wife, "What I really need is for you to be happy."

How many of us would have that presence of mind --- to use our last words, our last moments, to give the people we love some guidance in how to move forward after such a loss? If we could somehow be aware that each word could be the last one we say, who among us would have the courage to say to those we love, "What I really need is for you to be happy," and to act in a way that makes that possible? Who among us believes that any day could be the last, and acts that way? We are all so caught up in the day-to-day that we forget to acknowledge the things and people that make it all worthwhile to be here in the first place.

I’m certainly not perfect at acknowledging this gratitude and joy in those I care for, or even particularly good at it. I’m really new at it. But I’m hoping that if I keep doing it, it will change my little corner of the world.

And that’s how it begins --- just as the stone thrown into the lake brings the ripples, ever larger, to the shore.

War will not assure that those lives lost were not lost in vain; peace will. Peace in our lives, peace in our homes, our communities, our schools, and our time. And it starts with each of us having the courage to say to the people in our lives, "What I really need is for you to be happy" --- as selflessly as possible.

I hope that all of you find the peace you need in your lives and seek it wherever you believe you can find it.

Photos: On the Commons by Bill Truslow; Buttermilk Falls by Robert Llewellyn