In Search of Normal

So far, it's out of reach

By John Moreno Gonzales | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

At the Charm Beauty Salon on West 86th Street in Manhattan, Judith Strauber sat for her weekly polishing.

In the comfort of the familiar chair, her hands pampered by an attentive woman, the terror of last week's World Trade Center strike seemed far away - finally.

"It's not all that different," she said.

Then her thoughts swirled and her fears escaped, sentence by sentence: "You still feel something. When I saw Dan Rather cry last night, I thought I was going to faint ... I'm glad I'm not pregnant and none of my children are pregnant right now."

Perhaps out of some psychic drive, or survival instinct, or determination not to let the suicide pilots claim victory, New Yorkers yesterday tried to move on. But the more they tried, the more the disaster returned.

Nancy Cicciariello, 35, and Martha Pirone, 47, loaded their station wagons at a Waldbaum's parking lot in Bayside. Discussion turned to the Girl Scouts they help lead and last week's debate on whether they should take a long-planned camping trip.

"There was a lot of tension between the moms who felt uneasy about it and those who felt we should go on and get back to good days," Cicciariello said.

The mothers who wanted their old lives back won out. Seven leaders and 21 Girl Scouts of troops 4129 and 4070 went to Camp Kaufman in Holmes, upstate New York. The weekend was beautiful and the silence of the nights broken only by the chirping of crickets.

But something was not right. The country had been attacked and the girls knew they could not allow themselves to get too lost.

Old camping songs became impromptu renditions of "God Bless America" and "The Star Spangled Banner."

A few blocks from the supermarket, a 42-year-old postman, who declined to give his name, walked his route, a picture of American routine. But he could not shake the disaster either.

"It's there in the back of your mind," he said, pointing out that he worked as a security guard at the World Trade Center towers in the '80s. "It's always the pictures of those people being hit."

Freddy Arevalo, 33, and cousin Sylvia Ecos, 25, Bolivian immigrants, visited the Flushing Social Security office, where the line for a Social Security card was shorter than they expected. The cousins were disappointed by that. Imagine, missing long lines.

"We all want to live normal lives now," Arevalo said. "This life, full of thoughts of conflict, isn't good for us."

Enrique Lewis, 59, of Queens Village walked down a nearby avenue hand in hand with wife Connie Sevilla. They smiled to each other as they walked. But when a reporter asked Lewis if New Yorkers could move on from the disaster, Sevilla placed her hand on his arm, as if to brace him.

"This is a developed country, with the resources to rebuild and move ahead," he said. "But I think we're always going to feel some unease. Every time the president talks about war, I think about what it means. We have to get back at the people who did this. But does that mean the violence will end? I see no end. And only when it ends can the American people get back to a life without fear."

Laura Price-Brown contributed to this story.