To My Daughter, Kaya: 9/11 Reflections

Kaya Thomas

Dear Kaya,

When the planes struck at the World Trade Center twenty years ago you were just six years old. I was in a breakfast meeting at a private club in midtown Manhattan with the chair of a nonprofit organization. When the first plane hit, he and I thought it was a terrible accident. But when a waiter came back to say that a second plane had crashed into the other tower, we dropped everything and gathered around a television with the rest of the guests and staff.

My breakfast partner and I exited the club and went our separate ways. I walked to Sixth Avenue and W. 44th. I looked downtown: I could see smoke billowing. It was surreal, Kaya. Before long I saw people walking in a daze, covered in ash, looking zombie-like.

I called your grandma Ida and Jewel. In moments like that you reach out to those closest to you. I was very concerned about your mom because she worked in downtown Manhattan near South Ferry. I was so relieved when I found out that for some strange reason, she had decided to walk to the Staten Island ferry that morning and caught a later boat than usual. 

That ferry boat turned back to Staten Island and your mommy came to pick you up from school. 

Reading story after story about the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and the impact it’s had on New York City, the nation, and the world, got me reflecting on the impact of such an event on you and your generation. Then I thought about other pivotal moments: September 2008 when the bottom fell from under the U.S. economy, and November 2016, your first time voting in a presidential election, when what was unthinkable to me and to you actually came true.

I had gone to sleep, hoping that when I awoke, the first woman president would have been elected. To me, she was the less bad of two not-great choices. Exit polls seemed to be pointing to the unthinkable, but I still wouldn’t admit to myself that an unqualified, narcissistic menace-to-society would actually be elected. At about 2 am you called, hysterical. 

As your dad, It was one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had. How could this happen, daddy? Do they hate women that much that they elected him?? I tried to console you but the truth was that we were at the beginning of a four-year nightmare that ultimately led to an attack on the Capitol by misguided people who believed in the big lie that an election had been “stolen.”  

Now you’ve experienced a pandemic too. Thank God you’re not only safe and healthy, but are thriving, attending graduate school at M.I.T., after working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer. But the toll that these events have taken on you and your generation is heavy. When we’ve talked about politics, and when I’ve had occasion to teach and be in conversation with members of your generation, I sense a world-weariness and a skepticism that troubles me.

I can understand why. Considering the events above, you and your generation has experienced collective trauma. The mainstream media isn’t a real objective arbiter of facts; they play partisan games to capture niche audiences and to profit. Powerful social media firms weaponize conflict and polarization to rake in big bucks. Then there are the scandals involving powerful men abusing women—and getting away with it, for many years. The cases of police wrongdoing caught on camera, but with little or no ultimate accountability, is deeply unjust. Disparities grounded in the history of racism, caste, and class points to the American Dream as unreal for millions who live in poverty or from paycheck to paycheck in the richest nation on the planet.   

We live in a tragic world, for sure. Yet and still, as you also know, there are great opportunities if you’re prepared, creative, and willing to learn and grow from mistakes and disappointments. For instance, when you weren’t accepted into any of the specialized high schools like Brooklyn Tech, you were devastated. But you, like so many of your generation, are resilient in the face of tragedy and the blues.

When you came to live with Jewel and me in New Rochelle, and began attending the public high school there, you truly blossomed academically and socially. Whether it was through your mom’s family line or mine, we gave you love and affirmed your smarts and potential without fail. We all knew you were special, so our job was to give you the support and security you needed to grow and learn so you could come into your own. None of us believed that because you were a girl or because we weren’t rich or because you were Black American that you couldn’t achieve your dreams—whatever that turned out to be. 

When I’d take you to bookstores such as the Barnes & Noble at 65th and Broadway, across the street from Tower Records, so you could roam and read and pick whatever books you wanted, that freedom became a master key that unlocked your potential. Your daddy has always loved to read, but you, Lord have mercy, once the flame of love of reading was lit, it was over! You devoured so many books beyond your school studies, which stoked your imagination. Then when we’d walk down the block to visit Wynton Marsalis in his big skyrise apartment, you met a man of deep accomplishment and commitment who happened to be your daddy’s friend. When we’d attend jazz performances by him and other great jazz musicians, and go backstage, I wanted you to see them up close and personal, so you would realize that you could be great too.

Kaya and Wynton Marsalis backstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center

I wanted you to know that such creative brilliance was a part of your living heritage, your ancestral culture, and, therefore, was as much a part of your birthright as what you inherited from us, your biological and extended family.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the underside of the human condition will always be with us, sweetheart. But not only do you have ability to withstand and overcome them, you understand that a key is to not try to do so alone. That’s why I was so overjoyed to hear that in your joint MBA-Engineering program a requirement is to work together in and as teams. Individuality is crucial, indispensable in fact, but learning to communicate and collaborate well with others striving for excellence is the ultimate key. We call that collaborative leadership. 

Keep collaborating, leading, and swingin’ Kaya. We’re rooting for you! 

Kaya with her dad

Love,
Dad