Remember where you were when you saw it? For the first time?
I am sure all of us (those old enough) do.
I was in Boise, Idaho then. I was working as a management consultant, traveling Monday through Thursday. By then, I have been on the project for almost half a year. I wanted to get ahead, to have a career. I was an over-achiever wannabe and, like everybody else on my team, I was almost ready to head over to the client’s office before 7 am.
I was not giving what’s on the TV news my full attention until all of a sudden, it turned into a special report and the image of a skyscraper with ridiculous amount of smoke coming out of it came on the screen.
What’s that? It must be from a movie. They are doing a preview of some disaster movie.
I turned up the volume and it took me awhile to understand the words that were being said. But they did not make any sense at all.
How could it happen? What do they mean it’s a plane? No, it cannot be a plane. You can’t see anything. Just the smoke. How big is Word Trade Center anyway? Can an entire plane fit into it without us seeing a wing? What is going on? Something wrong with the plane? The engine stopped? The pilot had a heart attack? A hijacker? What exactly has happened?
We still did NOT know at this moment that this was still BEFORE, that a few minutes later most of us would catch one of the most horrifying images live on television. All the news cameras were pointing at the burning building as the reporters on TV and on the phone trying to carry on with a news story with little information coming through. And then we saw it…
This cannot be happening. It did not just happen. Oh my god.
I immediately called and woke up my husband, “Go turn on the TV, now!”. We watched the news together this way until our three-year-old son woke up and came to find husband in front of the television.
“I am not sure I know how to explain to him. But I think I am going to keep him at home with me today.”
Nobody was in the office when I walked in. We all gathered in the cafeteria where there were several television monitors. The entire day was filled with confusion, rumors, information and misinformation, news, more news, news that later was proven to be just rumors, and our efforts to make sense of what’s going on, and more immediately, when it was certain that the US airspace was closed indefinitely, to get ourselves home.
All of us wanted to be home. Everything else just seemed… trivial. Airports all over the country were closed. Unable to just sit and wait, several people , including one person who lived in New York City, rented cars and simply started driving. When all the rental cars were gone the next day, a fellow Chicagoan jumped on a Greyhound bus, similarly unable to just sit and wait, and started (as we found out later) a three-day journey home.
It was a surreal experience getting on a plane again on that Friday. I was of course excited to finally head home and yet, like every other air traveler in those weeks immediately afterwards, I was apprehensive, the images permanently seared in my mind. It felt like such a victory when I stepped into the house. I am finally home! I hugged my then three-year-old boy even tighter when he told me that he had been watching “the movie with a burning building and an airplane flying into another building” with daddy.
Like everybody else, we looked at our lives and looked them again really hard, felt grateful that we were able to hold each other in our arms, and saw and recognized for a brief moment what was truly important.
How old is our oldest now? Three and a half? Didn’t we say we would like another child at some point? What happened? Why did we overlook the fact that our oldest is now almost four?
…. …. …. …. …. ….
I have no idea what I am trying to say. I simply need to type my words out.
Remember where you were when you heard the news?
Sue did. She was right there. Sue was living in New York City then, only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Her post on her yearly remembrance of her personal 911 took my breath away.
…. …. …. …. …. ….
Last year I wrote about a couple who lost both of their sons on September 11, and how much the father’s words affected me:
“I don’t have any could’ve, should’ve or would’ves. I wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s not many people that the last words they said to their son or daughter was ‘I love you.'”
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from all the heart-breaks:
Remember to say I love you every time you say good-bye to your kids… (and all your other loved ones of course)
Somehow I have forgot already. I am glad I remembered today.
It’s so easy to forget, and maybe that’s what gets to me the most. Such tragedy, such loss, such courage, and still, we move on. We have to. But for one day, we can let the sadness back in, we can feel how raw everything still is. Then we lock it up tight and move on for another 364 days. Because that’s the only way to keep going.
I remembed this year, too.
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Thank you for this. Well said!
here in Australia I was driving home from work having finished at around 10pm. I worked for Qantas so the next few days were just crazy and highly emotional. It truly was horrific and unimaginable for those involved.
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You worked for Qantas? Oh my goodness. It must have been total pandemonium for the airline employees…
I was driving and listening to inane morning show banter. Just after 5am West Coast time, on my way home from a long weekend at my boyfriend’s 90 miles away. And the morning dorks said something about a plane crashing into a NY building. They called someone in the Starbucks at the ground floor of that building (I don’t know New York well enough and I didn’t know the building they named) and the customer at the cafe *in the World Trade Center after the first crash* talked about how it was like an earthquake. I was picturing a one or two-person aircraft. I got home and turned on the TV. Then I understood. Holy F—ing Shit! read the Onion headline a couple of weeks later. Amen, Onion.
Naptimewriting recently posted…Busy- busy- busy
It was unreal. Absolutely unreal. If it were in a movie we’d have made fun of the wild imagination of the director.
I was driving into the Smokies to track elk. I had to call my boss on a big bag cell phone to make sure it was really true. It felt wrong, somehow, to be surrounded by beauty and nature and silence…..knowing what was happening North of me.
Wildology recently posted…Bro-mances and Besties
For quite some time afterwards, I believe we all felt guilty for going back to our lives when people in NYC were dealing with the aftermath.
I was substitute teaching at the time and was in a third grade classroom. I remember going to the teachers lounge for lunch & seeing it on the TV… the first thing I did was begin to pray silently. The principal told us we could not have any TVs on or say anything to the students and I remember it being the longest school day afternoon I had ever experienced. Once I got home all we did was sit and watch it in horror…
Barb recently posted…destiny
I cannot believe that you had to keep it in check the whole day. I can’t imagine doing that… I would have exploded…
I was in the city that day and I still can’t shake those images. Sometimes I think it’s that remembering that helps love a little harder and louder (-:
{{{hugs}}}
I was teaching, and it was picture day. We had to walk our classes down to the field house for school pictures. A few of the teachers had some information on what was happening, and pretty soon, tvs were on in the teacher’s lounge, showing the disaster. I remember that I talked about it with my students, and one 15-year-old said something like, “I don’t get why you teachers are all freaked out. New York is far away. This isn’t gonna change anything here.” I didn’t know how to make him understand. But the next day he came back, and after watching the images on the news repeatedly, he got it. Even the high school kids were devastated.
Also, at that same time, my husband was in sales and was stuck in another state, I think Nevada, for quite a few days. I hated that he wasn’t home. I remember feeling just like you did, like we just need to be home right now. Togetherness was very important.
Thanks for the reminder.
“Togetherness was very important.” Yes. It was a mourning by the entire nation. I think part of it was how shocked we were to realize that there are people that hate us so much. What do you mean, we are the FUN Americans!
I remember where I was and I always will. What a crazy day.
Jack recently posted…Visions of Paradise
Yup. Insane.