asteroid B612

I was waking up to NPR in Charlotte. They were interviewing some kids author or songwriter or something. They were playing some annoying song about a red balloon.

Then the phone rang so I turned off the radio. It was Erica, sounding upset, and said that a plane had flown into the WTC. My first reaction was that it had to be a terrible accident, recalling that a bomber once flew into the Empire State Building, but she said they were saying it seemed to have been on purpose. She had a TV in her room, and I did not. After we hung up I turned the radio on again and heard the live coverage. Someone was describing the smoking buildings, and then they collapsed.

We gathered in the lobbies of our dorms to watch the news coverage together. Queens called a special prayer service that afternoon.

That night when Erica and I were driving to find something to eat I told her that I wished Gore had won the election because I didn't trust Bush to uphold our civil liberties. So it goes...

I was waking up in SoCal. The alarm can on, low volume, rock station. I wasn't really paying attention or quite awake yet and heard some kind of discussion about and attack in New York. Kind of surreal, not sure if I was really hearing what I was hearing. Woke up quite puzzled and ran downstairs to turn on the TV.

I had a meeting with a client later in the day. The trip to their office was quite odd as I have never seen the freeways in SoCal so empty when the sun was out.

At the time, hubby and I lived a 60-min train-ride from Manhattan. But on that day we were on a vacation, visiting friends in Kentucky. Because we were on vacation, the husband of the couple we were visiting was home for the day. He and my husband were working out in their garage while the two wives were getting ready for the day. The husbands came in just as I was finishing up and I heard them share that a neighbor had told them an airplane had flown into a Twin Tower. So, we all plunked ourselves down in front of NBC and stayed there the rest of the day, watching it all unfold.

I can still vividly recall the wife sitting on a rocking chair, nursing her 3 month old baby. We didn't have children yet--Isaac would come into existence later in the week--and I remember thinking, "What is going through her head? The whole world just changed before her very eyes. The world she's just brought this little baby into. What is going through her mind for her baby's future?"

The next day, hubby and I continued on our journey. We drove and saw sights and camped for the next two days, so we didn't watch any television. What we learned we only learned from NPR. We had a close friend who took the train into the Twin Towers every morning for work. It took us a couple of days to get word that she was OK. Physically and spiritually. I had a friend whose work frequently brought him to the Pentagon. We weren't able to learn he was physically OK until we returned home. Spiritually, his world was rocked and he redirected his political aspirations from federal to state.

It was surreal to know our home was in the middle of all that--between Manhattan and DC and Central PA--but we were so far away. At the same time, I think we were spared a great deal by escaping the visual bombardment of the TV. We knew what was going on, but were spared the relentless images.

At work in Philly, watching the whole thing on TV, while frantically trying to call our friend D on my cell. D commuted from Philly to work in the Towers every day. No one could get cell calls out because the networks were overloaded. Thankfully, one of my many redials resulted in a ring, and there was D, impatience in his voice, "I can't talk now. I over slept and missed my train. I'm running down JFK Blvd to make the next one. Can I call you back?"

"No, D," I yelled. "Stop running this minute and listen to me. You can't go to work. Your building has been hit by an airplane." What I was telling him just didn't compute. He kept moving toward the train station while I tried to convince him that he wouldn't be getting a train to Manhattan this day. Our connection broke, and I bowed my head at my desk, tears streaming down my face, and thanked the Lord that David overslept and missed his train.

One of our employees who commutes to our office in Philly from Long Island once a week heard the news on the radio on his way in, he turned around to go back home, and got stuck in traffic on the GW bridge. As he sat listening to the commentary on the radio, he watched the 2nd tower as it fell.

I don't think those of us who live and work in the northeast have really moved on. Every time I go to Jersey for meetings, I look across the water and am still surprised that the towers aren't there. It is still a shock to remember why they aren't there.

I heard it on the radio first, a local station where the normally comedic duo were talking about this crazy thing that had just happened and trying to figure out what it meant, whether it was a terrorist or a pilot who had passed out or something. Only one plane had struck at that point. I was in the shower, listening to them talk but not quite getting what was going on, and then they said they had just gotten word that the second plane crashed into the other tower. I started to worry, then got out of the shower and turned on CNN just in time to see the first pictures of the plane that hit the Pentagon. I started crying. I called Jack (see above), whose dorm was about 100 feet from mine and who I spent the rest of the day with, and then I called my mom and could barely choke out what was happening. She was teaching as normal that morning, and nobody at her school had told them the news yet, because the administrators had to plan what to say first.

I remember standing in the lobby of Jack's dorm, where several students were parked in front of the lobby TV, and we watched as the first tower turned from a building with a plume of smoke coming out, to a mass of rubble there on the street. I think the worst part for me was imagining all those people who had been above the floor where the planes hit, trying to escape or figure out what to do, most of them likely knowing they were about to die. Facing one's mortality in a fiery moment like that is unimaginable to me.

A friend of mine was sitting in the hall of our dorm that evening, talking to a family member on her phone, and when I walked by she was hanging up, so I asked her how she was doing. She told me she was alright, but that it was her 21st birthday. I've wondered ever since what it feels like to celebrate being one year older in the midst of experiencing something so horrific.

I remember when people started putting those "Never Forget" stickers on their cars, and I thought, "Ha, like we could EVER forget." But like anything, I think I've forgotten a bit what it felt like that day. I have been thinking recently about how Kent is probably going to have a school assignment someday about talking to his parents about 9/11, and I'm still trying to figure out what I'd say.

Hey there - I forgot that I had emailed - that seems like ages and ages ago, doesn't it? I remember watching the television with all my new co-workers, only a few weeks after our wedding and moving to STL.

Sorry guys i have left checking mails but now once again i have switched to internet..keep checking my emails...