This may seem unimportant to most because everyone has one, but I feel the need to get it out. I have thought many times of starting a blog, but always manage to sidetrack myself. I think I am going to start though, and what better story to start with….
I woke up on the morning of 9/11/2001 like I do every morning – groggy, and to the sounds of Shawn Cash & Jeff Jensen trying to make me laugh – I always set my alarm clock to them so that I would wake up laughing and with a smile on my face. On this day, the only thing I heard was “a plane has hit the World Trade Center.” My first thought was “hmm…that’s odd, they never talk news on this station unless it is weird news.”
So, I rolled over and poked my husbands shoulder and said, “Hey, Shawn and Jeff just said that a plane hit the World Trade Center.”
His response….”what have you been smoking?” Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.
I lay there waking up and thinking for a few minutes – I had hit the snooze button, so the news was no longer on after that first sentence I heard. I couldn’t stop pondering why they would say something like that, it was so abnormal for them to randomly talk about news on that program, so I decided to just do a quick check on the tv before I got the kids up.
I wandered out the living room and turned on the tv, and sure enough the first plane was burning inside the first tower. I realized after a few minutes of shock that I needed to get ready for work and get the kids up so that we could get on with our day, so I went about my usual routine (as quickly as possible because I wanted to hear more about what had happened). I got my 7 year old up and dressed, got my 6 month old up and changed – hurried through getting a quick bowl of cereal for my 7 year old and a bottle for the baby, all the while hearing snippets of the news and still not really letting it sink in what was going on.
Once we finally had everyone dressed, fed and ready to go, I sat on the couch with my daughters (at this point the second tower had been hit as well). I then proceeded to explain what was happening to my 7 year old, as she asked questions about what was going on. All I could tell her as we watched in horror as the first tower fell, was that many people were in those burning buildings and obviously dying. I sat numb and crying while my daughter tried to understand the grand scope of what was going on (how could a 7 year old possibly understand the magnitude of this!). We sat there until just after the second tower fell, and I think I was in a state of shock – I didn’t know what to think, and just could not comprehend what had just happened, and how many people must have gone down with those buildings.
I finally had to peel my eyes off of the television and get my daughter to school. I took the baby into the bedroom and put her in the bed with her Dad, and told him that he really needed to get up and see what was on TV.
I dropped my daughter off at school, then drove into work. I worked just 1 block from the State Capitol, so I felt a little unnerved about being there that day, but the management refused to let us go home. There were TV’s all over our office, so most of us spent the day crowded around them (who could work when our country was being attacked!?!?!). So, there I sat wringing my hands all day not knowing what to do – I felt like there was something that needed to be done but what could it possibly be – I felt so helpless. Now, mind you, I live in Sacramento. I am nowhere near New York or Pennsyvania. I didn’t know anyone in those towers, or on the Flight 93 or in the Pentagon, but I felt a fear like I had never felt. And sitting so close to the State Capitol all day in one of the most populated states in the country, that if attacked would have an effect on the entire world left me unsettled. We had no idea if more attacks were going to happen, and at that point still no idea what or who had done that.
I spent about a week of being glued to the TV whenever I did not have something more important to do. I wrote checks to people asking for donations for the attacks, I threw money into firemens boots at intersections, and somehow no matter how much I did, it didn’t make me feel any better.
Here we are now, 10 years later. I was walking my dog a few days ago, and I saw a jet flying over. The train of thought started. I will never look at an airliner again and not think about the events on 9/11 – not necessarily direct thoughts of 9/11, but indirect thoughts about things like “who is on that plane”, or “is that plane going to crash.” I have ridiculous fears about them now. Last May, I flew for the first time in over 10 years – it was my first flight after 9/11 and I felt irrational because of all of the notions that swam in my head. I know that flying is safe, and that the odds of getting on a plane with terrorists is small, but it doesn’t change the thoughts that race through my mind.
I have watched many 9/11 documentaries over the years, and in the past week have watched several more new ones that give even more perspective on everything that happened that day, and as I watched them it all came back to me. It feels like it just happened all over again almost. I can’t believe it has been 10 years already, and I still feel sick to my stomach over what happened that day, the loss of life, the fact that people did that to us on purpose, and the fact that even being on the other side of the country from where the events took place, I feel like my sense of freedom crumbled away that day and left a gaping open hole just waiting for the next wave. I don’t feel safe anymore – not like I did before that day.
My 10 year old has no idea of the magnitude of what happened that day because she was just a baby. Unfortunately, she will never know what it is like to feel the freedom that we felt before that day, only the restrictive way of life we have now. Where you have to take off your shoes before getting on a plane (she probably thinks that is the strangest thing in the world – shoes?). Or why you can’t take a full-size bottle of shampoo or cologne onto a plane. To someone who didn’t know or understand the events that happened in our country that year, it would probably seem like really weird practices, but to those of us that watched it, it is normal.
My 17 year old remembers watching the entire thing with me, and still is sickened by it – obviously she understands it better today than when she watched it happen live.
I think that almost everyone has a story from that day. I think it is like the stories I heard growing up from my parents – “where were you when JFK was killed”. For my generation, it is “where were you when the twin towers were attacked”.
I don’t think anyone could forget. It was a life changer for everyone – it changed the security of everything around us – post offices, airports, office buildings, government buildings, etc. Even the local dams were closed down for lengthy periods of time and traffic rerouted. Everything changed that day.
I will never forget!