The first time I ever drank Jack Daniels whiskey was also the last time. 

It was 25 years ago today – September 11th 2001. In Brooklyn, New York. I found myself drinking it just a couple of hours after the World Trade Center had been attacked and destroyed, a few miles away from where we lived. 

Just before 9am, I heard a newsflash on the radio as I was getting ready to go to work. Ian and I clambered out our pokey kitchen onto the fire escape and up onto the roof of our 4-storey apartment building. From there we looked across the beautiful blue sky to the familiar skyline of lower Manhattan. Then we saw with our own eyes a plane flying into the second tower, and then, a little while later a massive cloud of smoke which cleared to reveal both towers were gone. Just gone from the skyline. The shock we felt was gradual, slowly taking hold of our reason. Was this an accident, was it something else, what was going on?. 

What else would we do but think of the company of friends, and maybe a strong drink. We had no smart phones or Whatsapp in those days where we could converge in a virtual space and express our shock, share thoughts, news. 

We had dial-up internet at home and I managed to get an email to my sister out in Long Island to say we were fine and she ended up passing the word around the family. I was smart to do that.

Next thing we knew, our dial-up went down: either knocked out or just jammed with panicked traffic.

And from that point on, the universe of Brooklyn, that huge but separate part of New York, gently closed in around us. We had no TV or radio as our local stations were beamed from an antenna on top of the twin towers. We learned by text, and instinct, that we weren’t meant to travel anywhere. Subways and buses were stopped to stop people moving around. 

The sky above our roof went eerily silent as the airspace was closed, while later in the afternoon it ripped with the sounds of fighter jets. I hated that bombastic sound, so un-New York. But Ian reminded me they were there to protect us. 

Is it fair to keeping talking about 9/11 when so many other terrible and terrifying things have happened in many places since then, and will continue to happen? Is it old history? 

But for me and clearly for the majority of Americans (a country that had never before experienced invasion) this was a marker that we were living out history, it was happening to us whether we liked it or not. And things were going to change. I am not an American and I moved away from New York a long time ago after three amazing years but I deeply loved that city and my time there; it’s part of my identity.

Watching it all from our rooftop we were at a loss as to what to do. Looking down we could see people on the street going about their normal business, walking slowly, carrying grocery bags. Cars moved as normal. This wasn’t a movie, the streets were not full of panicky yelling people. Or maybe it would go that way? 

I texted my friend Sarah who lived 20 minutes from us and she invited us over. She had cable TV and it was working. Some others were coming over, stranded at home with nothing else to do.

On our way to Sarah’s place we decided to stop at the hospital off 7^th Avenue. Maybe we could give blood. Something useful to offer, feeling useless as we did. We joined a long line of other Brooklynites waiting for the same reason, until a nice nurse came out to tell us that there was no need for donors. There were no reports of injuries coming from the towers. People had died outright and, we would learn, many would never be found.

As we left the hospital with our heads low a couple of old Italian guys sitting outside asked us what the long line was for. “It’s because of what happened at the World Trade Center this morning”, I told them, “we were all trying to give blood. But they don’t want it.” 

They looked at each other: “What are you talking about?” We told them what happened, the words sounding odd as they came out of my mouth. They didn’t seem so bothered and stayed sitting on the wall as we walked on, watching their little Brooklyn world moving quietly about them.

Sarah was, and still is, a good friend, and a real sweetheart from Tennessee. We all hugged and she brought out the bourbon, the Jack Daniels – she had nothing else – and handed us a glass. We sat on her couch clutching her cats and watched CNN for hours – looking for nuggets of explanation, from New York, then from Washington which was also under attack. And maybe other places in the US too. In the world? We didn’t know. The day passed in a haze

Later on, as we walked home, tipsy from JD and stodgy pizza, we saw people coming out of the ground at the Grand Army Plaza subway station. Their clothes were white from the slowly-settling ash of the streets in lower Manhattan. Their faces were also white, from shock and exhaustion, many of them having been stuck on a non-moving subway for hours, out of communication with their loved ones and the bigger picture of what was going on above-ground. 

I had managed to avoid that situation for myself as I had not yet left for work when the attacks happened, but that would probably have been the worst that could have happened, with my workplace being near Houston street. 

Over the coming days as the city stayed at a halt and no-one went to work, we checked in with an ever-widening network of friends, acquaintances and colleagues. 

One friend who worked in finance in a neighbouring building witnessed bodies falling (or, he thought, more likely, jumping) from what had been the tallest building in the US. 

One of my old work clients had set up his own startup’s office in one of the towers. His funeral a week later in New Jersey was devastating; so many people not knowing what to say to each other, feeling this was just one of many many funerals around the region. 

Another friend revealed that his brother-in-law was one of those who helped force down the Pennsylvania plane, the ramifications of which have stayed with his family.

Later still, back at work, I learned of many other people who died that day, the invisible victims who are rarely mentioned: the cleaners, janitors and window-cleaners who serviced the towers, most of them immigrants in New York. I was working on a website project for the city union that represented these people and their families. It was work that I was more than happy to keep doing as the union struggled to find ways to help the families left behind.

The landscape and mood of the city began to change over the coming weeks – with the arrival of American flags, of charities from around the country, the posters of the missing all over the lampposts of lower Manhattan, the unwelcome rhetoric of the government, and eventually, by Thanksgiving, the protests against relatoratory actions, the toxic air. Not to mention the world we now have today, surely shaped by layers and layers of reaction to that day.

But on that day, we were in a bubble in Brooklyn. Perhaps better off not really knowing what was going on, and what was to come, trusting that we were safe and nothing more would happen. 

And we were lucky to share Jack Daniels with friends. I raise a virtual glass to them every September 11. 

When I got on the No. 4 bus, near its starting point in Monkstown, it was empty and I could take my favourite seat, upstairs in the top right corner. That’s where you used to be able to look down through the window at the driver’s head below, but it’s now simply the best spot for a panoramic view over Dublin Bay as the bus trundles into town.

At the stop in Booterstown I saw some women with children and strollers and bags prepare to get on. They looked a little stunned, as if they weren’t yet used to the routine of boarding a Dublin bus, beeping their Leap cards, folding up the stroller, finding seats. They split in two and one mother came upstairs with two identical little girls, squeezing into a couple of seats down on the left side. They spoke quietly, in a language I recognised to be not quite Russian, the girls sounding a bit disgruntled. Without thinking, I turned around, stood up and nodded towards my choice seat at the front. The mother – who looked no older than 25 – smiled at me and nudged the squirming girls out of their seats and over to the front, while I went to sit further down the bus.

Sure enough, within a minute of settling into their new spot, I could hear their little voices brighten as they started to take in the city unfolding before them – the trees brushing against the windows, cyclists weaving around cars and trucks, people walking. Around Ballsbridge another No. 4 bus headed towards us and the excitement mounted: “babu babu” I heard – could that be Ukrainian for bus? The number four? The colour yellow? I’ll have to look it up sometime.

As much as the twin girls chattered and exclaimed – as only five year olds do best – their mother stayed quiet and barely moved her head. In the space given her, where her children could be distracted by the world, her thoughts must have aired themselves, her mind set free to loosen its worries.

And as much as her hair was straight and black, her daughters had heads of blonde under their matching glittery grey caps: hair they surely inherited from their father. Wherever their father was, just at that moment, I didn’t want to begin to imagine.

I too have been a mother with children on a bus in an unfamiliar country, in a new home that I was now meant to call home and live my life. I know the sense of dread that I might put the stroller in the wrong place, get off at the wrong stop, misunderstand and be embarrassed if someone speaks to me in a language I don’t yet speak.

14 years ago we moved to Oslo with my husband’s job and our second daughter was born there. Four days after she was born, we had to take the tram to the hospital for a checkup. Even before we left our cocoon of an apartment, I knew we’d be late and could miss our appointment. The February snow was heavy and seemed to blow straight in our eyes more than usual. The tram, when we stomped on board, was packed. I felt exhausted and weighed down by this new little creature I had strapped to my chest. There was no seat free, and not one person noticed me and offered me one. Heads were bent into phones, collars were up and hats were half pulled over faces. I held onto a pole, my legs weak and hot within my heavy coat.

My head started to swim with a feeling of being out of place, not wanted, not helped. I was too shy to ask for a seat or even stare anyone out of one. As some students got off, I fell into a seat. And I started to cry.

I’ll never forget that intense sadness and feeling of displacement, and it’s a chord deep inside me that was struck anew while I sat on that No. 4 bus last week as it made its way through the Spring-green avenues of south Dublin city.

My experience can barely begin to compare with the situation of the black-haired woman and her twins sitting ahead of me. Wasn’t I living in a country I had chosen to move to from another peaceful country, my husband was with me, we both had jobs and an apartment. I had a choice about being there. And freedom.

But it served as the barest frame of reference, to offer me some imagination to grasp what might be going on in the head, and heart, of this young mother, of all the mothers sitting on buses and Luases, pushing strollers to volunteer centres, cashing in Dunnes vouchers, settling babies down in stuffy hotel rooms, in Dublin, Waterford, Berlin, Warsaw, Tbilisi.

And I hope that my tiny action, of sharing my favourite seat might help for 20 minutes even one other mum, and two beautiful little girls. Girls who, I think, will surely be speaking Dublin English within the year.

At Merrion Square, as they made their way down the stairs, clutching hands as the bus swayed, I looked out the window. Even if the young mother were to look at me, I didn’t need to know.

“Ya eejit!”. So says my eight-year old to anyone she can, whenever she can, since she heard it at the Rapunzel pantomime last week at the Gaiety. This was our first ever family trip to the panto and our knowledge of Irish culture has now shifted up a notch. I’m a Dubliner and I’m sure I went a few times as a child, as you did. But my husband’s non Irish and our two kids have only lived abroad – until this summer, when we moved to Dublin to give it a go, and although we’ve usually come for Christmas we’ve never had time to do the panto before.

About five minutes in, a throwaway remark from the blue-eye-shadowed King allows me, and the rest of the crowd, to let loose with our first “oh no he’s not”. “Shhh”, says my youngest, and on my other side, her father gives me a look. “You’re supposed to do that”, I tell them

Within five minutes they’re at it too, and soon the girls’ faces are glowing some more, fitting in with all the other expectant faces around the balconies and stalls, going with the flow, the silliness and shouting “boo!” to the witch and “oh yes they are!” and by the end of the two-plus hours they’re happily singing and dancing (as do all the mums and dads).

“Is that a man?” they ask about the fabulous, wig-and-multiple-skirts-wearing leading dame, Ninny Nanny Noonah, having no idea that this same actor, Joe Conlon, has been playing more or less the same role, with just different lines, for the last 28 years. During the course of this “drama” involving metres of hair, air-guitar-playing heroes, dopey country fellas, a drunken pub scene and farting rabbits, I have to translate a few Dublin expressions that are new to my family: “have some grub”, “like a Fair City kidnap plot” and “Scarleh I was”.

High up in the second balcony (indeed, last minute tickets) we get a top-down view over the satisfied audience, of the terrific band working hard in the pit, the dancers waiting in the wings, and a head-on view of the family of eight in the balcony across the way who are all wearing Santa hats and jumpers, sharing with them the relief of not sitting in the front rows where you get sprayed by water and have your hairstyle publicly insulted.

During the interval I encourage the kids to explore the nooks and crannies of this beloved old theatre, to peek over the other balconies, look at the old programmes up and down those dark wooden staircases, buy something from the bar beside the glittering Christmas tree. “Sure you might as well get the big popcorn”, says the nice woman behind the bar, telling them to enjoy their first panto. She tells me she has four kids of her own, in their teens and twenties. One of them has a little boy, just 10 months old: “he’s so gorgeous, he just doesn’t know how much joy he brings into our lives”.

As for my husband (who’ll go to see a Shakespeare play at the drop of a hat) he was dead impressed by the Gaiety and his first panto: all that singing and dancing and embarrassment and joking that says nothing more complicated than “we will entertain you”. And that’s what all those hard-working people up on the stage of gaiety did for us.

Our eldest girl is so impressed that she wants to go around the back to the stage door off Grafton Street and try to meet some of the actors. We join one other family huddling in the alley and after about ten minutes she gets to greet the two younger stars, Ciara Lyons and Johnny Ward; I don’t think we’d recognise the older stalwarts out of makeup and costumes. We’re not really sure how famous they are but they were great, and they autograph our programme and give words of encouragement for her own now-bolstered dreams of the stage.

Next to the alley entrance there is a street soup-kitchen, popped up in place for the night once the shops were closed. Needy customers loiter and chat, and the volunteers, dressed in yellow vests, do their darndest to make their evening a bit better. One volunteer comes over to our girls as they’re waiting at the stage door – would they like a hot chocolate? They decline politely, they know who the hot drinks are meant to be for. The woman insists: “they have marshmallows in them”. In their party dresses they are actually freezing so they gratefully accept, and in the two minutes it takes for her to come back with the steaming milky cups, they’ve grown up a bit more. A surprised volunteer takes the few bob I offer him, and we feel very lucky to head off to our warm bus and our warm home, having learnt a bit more about the realities of a Dublin Christmas.

This story was published in the Irish Times on December 26th.