Remembering

It’s always a bitter sweet experience now when flying into New York City. I catch my breath as Manhattan comes into view, New York!  New York! I sing to my self, but immediately recognize the void and the memories from ten years ago come flashing back.

Filmmaker Dan Meth compiled all (or at least most) of the cameos made by the Twin Towers in the movies from 1969 (when it was literally being born) to 2001…

 

Twin Tower Cameos from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

 

Whenever I catch the scene being replayed, I cannot avert my eyes from the surreal images. My oldest is now 13. It’s been ten years yet I still cannot believe the horror.

Remember where you were when you saw it? For the first time? (The following was originally written and posted a year ago)

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.

With utter disbelief, while I was calling my husband to wake him up, “Go turn on the TV, now!” I watched the second plane fly into view of the news video camera…  We watched the news together connected by phone until our three-year-old son woke up and came to find my 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.

31 thoughts on “Remembering

  1. dufmanno

    I stood on the roof of the first tower watching the second under construction when I was a little girl. My dad knew some of the people on the crew and they took us up to look over the side (it used to only have clear wind shields instead of all the safety stuff they put up later) That was some freaking view.
    By the time 9/11 happened I had already moved to DC from NY but I’m glad to say that ALL my close friends and family (some of whom worked in the towers) made it out okay that day.
    dufmanno recently posted…Screw You SunflowerMy Profile

    Reply
  2. Chickens Consigliere

    Great post, AofA. It must have been really hard for you to be so far from home. We all just wanted to Be Home, didn’t we? Hugging our kids and knowing all the while that we would probably be going to war, maybe thinking how that would involve them in years to come. I worked at a university then. We had a TV in the reception area and that’s where we all gathered most of the day. The university sent out a lot of interns to the hospitality industry and so our first thought was, “who do we have working in NYC and where are they”. We also had a lot of international students, some from the middle east. You could see the fear on their faces when they came in. They were so young, so far from home, and they worried they were the enemy. Those are the things that stick with me-wanting to be home, sick for those the families who lost their loved ones, thoughts of war, worried about our students out on internships and sorry for those foreign students and their families, so far away from each other worrying about the repercussions to come. I would have been so scared as a student and wild with worry as a parent. We are lucky that terrorism has visited us so little. When you think about the countries where it is a daily battle…you know what? I cannot even wrap my mind around it.

    Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      You know. Until yesterday I did not realize that I had never seen the footage of the plane actually flying into the 2nd tower. There was no YouTube then. I foolishly clicked on the link and… I wish I hadn’t.

      Reply
  3. Lies

    I purposefully avoided all 9/11 posts in my reader this weekend – but your post, I wanted to read. The thing is, I’ve kind of had it with it all, and I can never help but think “stupid Americans, you brought this onto yourselves” (it goes without saying this does not mean I don’t feel for the victims and the relatives left behind, I’m not an insensitive bitch).
    I was studying for my physics exam when my aunt called me from the airport: look at the news. She was leaving for the States that day with her family, I was going to be following 4 days later after my exam. And 9/11 will always be that: a missed chance to visit the States. Well, that, and I’m not allowed bottle of water on the plane (although… that’s not quite true). I tend to forget that, on this side of the ocean, I didn’t need to worry about friends, or relatives. I saw every second of footage from that day, but in a way that’s just what it was: footage. Nothing real.

    Thanks for reminding me there’s a very good reason why people make such a fuss of this day.
    Lies recently posted…Quote on a SungdayMy Profile

    Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      I think that day was the first time for many Americans to realize that not everybody in the world loves “us” (using quotation marks because I am kind of us and kind of them…) Not everybody is wooed by the chocolate handed out by the big white boys with blonde curls and sunshiny smiles as you see in WWII movies…

      Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      When we were having dinner in the backyard last night, every time a plane flew over our head (we are in the flight path out of ORD as all Chicago suburbs…) there was a weird feeling in my heart…

      Reply
  4. Irene

    I didn’t find out til recently that my niece, 24 or so at the time, was on the 86th floor of the 2nd tower. The one plane hit on the 88th. She lost all her friends that day. Someone gave her the “2” indicating Tower 2 that was mounted on a wall somewhere in that tower. She has it in a shadow box with a small metal plate with an engraving on it about The World Trade Center Tower 2 and some other inscriptions. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it. She has just recently been able to bring it out and display it. Anyone involved in this will never be the same.

    She is the only close relation and connection I have to this incident. Yet I felt so violated that day. There was an eery stillness in the air as no airplanes (I lived within 10 miles of a small airport) in the air but just a weird atmosphere of shock and dismay. I lived next door to the elementary school that my kids attended so I wasn’t concerned or anything. My poor boss’s husband was just emerging from the towers when the first plane struck. The poor woman was beside herself when she couldn’t get a hold of him. Needless to say she left work, picked up her kids from school and went home. I’m sure with baited breath waiting for that phone to ring. He did was safe.
    Irene recently posted…Summer of ’42My Profile

    Reply
  5. kathy

    I struck by what you say in the comment above. Yes, you are so right. The events of 9/11 have become part of our nation’s collective memory. I don’t think we’ll forget.

    It’s amazing how looking back helps us see the way forward, and how for many of us, blogging helps us do that.

    I wrote about 9/11 today and how we, as bloggers, are posting our way to a more peaceful tomorrow.

    God bless you, Lin, and God bless America!

    Kathy

    Reply
  6. kathy

    I struck by what you say in the comment above. Yes, you are so right. The events of 9/11 have become part of our nation’s collective memory. I don’t think we’ll ever forget.

    It’s amazing how looking back helps us see the way forward, and how, for many of us, blogging helps us do that.

    I wrote about 9/11 today and how we, as bloggers, are posting our way to a more peaceful tomorrow.

    God bless you, Lin, and God bless America!

    Kathy
    kathy recently posted…Two New Apps for WordPress.comMy Profile

    Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      Yes! And it also helps us to take stock of how far we have come (or not)… Look at the country now. I thought I heard one person heckling Obama after his short speech during the commemoration. Did anybody hear that?

      Reply
  7. Andrea

    I was teaching, and it was school picture day, so a lot of kids and teachers were meandering back and forth for pics. One of the teachers had the news on in the lounge — we were undergoing renovation and didn’t have tvs in our classrooms. When I explained to my 10th grade students what was going on, one of them said, “So what? That’s in New York! What’s the big deal?” He returned the next day to tell me, after watching the news from home and seeing it all unfold, he realized it was an incredibly big deal. It did change our students, as it changed us all.
    Andrea recently posted…Speechless Yet AgainMy Profile

    Reply
  8. Amber

    As one of your younger readers, I remember 9/11 from a teen’s perspective: I heard and watched everything go down in my Freshman 1st hour class. We were all too young and immature to really understand our emotions but most of us were terrified. This description really brought tears to my eyes as it is how I see things now (if that makes any sense).
    Amber recently posted…And Life Goes OnMy Profile

    Reply
  9. Jack@TheJackB

    Forgive me for cutting and pasting, but this is a big part of my memory of the day:

    I spent three frantic hours trying to track down my best friend that day. We met the first day of kindergarten way back in ’74 and both still lived in LA.

    Except his job sent him to Manhattan for two weeks to work at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mine was supposed to send me out to a trade show at the Javitz Center. We were supposed to meet for a drink at Windows of the World.

    But the boss decided not to send me so I stayed home and watched the towers burn and crumble. Stayed home and watched my son build block towers and knock them down while the people on the screen jumped from windows.

    Stayed home and cursed the phone for being busy and then finally got through to him and found out he came back to LA early. Told him that I would kick his ass for not calling me to let me know he was ok and then sighed deeply.

    Every year I call him on 9-11 to confirm that he is ok. Everyone he worked with in that office died, but he didn’t. I feel terribly for those people and their families, but I am grateful that the old man was out of there.
    Jack@TheJackB recently posted…The Children Of September 11My Profile

    Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      Oh Jack… Thank you for sharing this. {{{hugs}}}

      I was just reading the article in the economist and it talked about how everybody who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald who were in the office that day was killed. When I saw Cantor Fitzgerald, my heart skipped a beat. Even I had that kind of reaction, I cannot even imagine what the waiting must have been like for you. I am glad your old buddy is ok.

      Reply
    1. Absence Alternatives Post author

      It’s part of the collective memory now. But for how long? I sometimes wonder. But I listened to This American Life today, and people that have been intimately affected by the tragic have complicated feeling about this motto “Never forget”…

      Reply
  10. Ameena

    It seems like just yesterday and yet it seems like ages ago. I remember exactly what I was doing and how I didn’t breathe until I found out that my brother – who, incidentally, had taken the last subway under the WTC – was found alive and well.

    So much sadness when I visit NYC. But I can’t wait to move there.
    Ameena recently posted…i don’t want to knowMy Profile

    Reply
  11. Andrea @ Shameless Agitator

    Thank you for sharing the video. Mr. Shameless and I lived in NYC from 1989-1994. Our apartment on Staten Island was on the highest hill (aside from the Fresh Kills landfill), on the 12th floor. We had a spectacular view of the NY harbor, the Verazzano Bridge, Brooklyn, NJ, etc. The towers were always brightly lit, except for that day in 1993 when the terrorists tried to bring the towers down the first time. The photo took that night shows two dark silhouettes, surrounded by the lights from helicopters.
    Andrea @ Shameless Agitator recently posted…FlashesMy Profile

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.