| Upper East Side, September 18, 2001
Mike and Dolores Buonasora were having lunch with their 5-year-old son Nico at 1:30 around 80th St and 1st Ave. Nico usually has lunch in school or at the day care center, but his parents decided they should all meet up. Nico had just begun kindergarten at Manhattan Country School when Tuesday’s event sent Mike down to pick their son up from school at 11 o’clock in the morning, before the scheduled half-day ended at noon. “They didn’t tell them anything,” he says. “They told them it was a transportation problem, which it was. They left it up to the parents to explain.” He had heard from co-workers within minutes of the first crash. Dolores also heard through co-workers. “We were on a field trip,” says Dolores, who works at P.S. 290, Manhattan Day School. “We got the kids back to class and then they said it was ok for me to go pick up Nico.” They walked home to Queens together on Tuesday across the 59th Street Bridge. All other routes of transportation were closed. Nico had questions that day. “He was confused why we were walking over the bridge,” said Mike. “He wanted to know why his father wasn’t going back to work. He saw some jets and he wanted to know what they were.” Mike and Dolores didn’t talk much to Nico that night because they figured that school would be closed on Wednesday and they would have more time to discuss it with him then. “We had to process it,” says Dolores. So we waited until Wednesday morning and limited the amount of TV he watched. After their discussion, says Dolores, “Nico wanted to know if the house was safe, if his school was safe. He wanted to know about the fire escape.” Dolores then turned to Nico and said, “Nico, what happened yesterday? What happened at the World Trade Center?” He looked at both of them, then said, “It broke. The ceiling fell down.” “That’s right,” coaxed Dolores. “Who did it?” “A mean person,” he answered. She continued, “Most people are good, right? But some people are bad, right?” He nodded. “The big thing for him,” said Mike, “was that we had family coming from Spain [where Dolores comes from]. They were coming on Saturday but she cancelled. So he was sad he wasn’t going to see her and he wasn’t going to Washington.” Upper East Side, September 18, 2001 |