A guest on a morning TV show was describing her experience being in the world trade center when the buildings were hit. It was her first day, first hour on a new job. As she escaped the building she didn't turn around, she never saw the smoke pouring from the towers. She didn't watch them fall and she has never watched any footage showing those things. She wanted to remember the skyline as she has always known it; she's never looked back.
Ten years ago, my junior year in college, I stood in my two-bedroom apartment watching breaking news on the Today Show about a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers. As the anchors speculated about what had happened, a second plane came onto the screen. I think anyone in the world that was watching felt the same panic and disbelief that I was. In a quick second, the heaviest realization sunk in- this was no accident, it wasn't a plane sadly off course someone had deliberately flown two planes into the Twin Towers.
My country was being attacked.
As one woman was starting her first day and first hour of a new job, this had become my first day and first hour living a changed life; living in a changed world.
At that time I didn't know the extent of it. I didn't want to ask the stupid questions of "How many people are in the towers and how are they going to get out?" And it seems that those people that did understand didn't want to alarm the rest of us. No one spoke of the thousands that were at work in the Towers or what was happening to those that were on the upper floor. I was given a few more minutes and hours of innocence not realizing exactly what those gaping holes represented.
As the towers went down and the Pentagon was hit and Flight 93 fell to Pennsylvania, I began to understand. I figured out that despite living a charmed life in Idaho, there were people that hated my country so badly that they would go to extreme lengths to hurt us. I realized that no matter what I did I had little control over some things, things that had a tremendous impact on my life. This fact scared me and still does. I also felt, though, a love for our country, for a people united.
I drove down Pocatello's Yellowstone Ave on Friday, Sept. 14th and every single business had a flag flying. The street was lined with red, white and blue- a showing of support for the people killed, for the families left behind and for the our country having to move ahead. I was overcome. I cried as I drove. The enormity of that week was crashing into me. While feeling my country's grief, I remember wishing that this feeling of unity and patriotism would hold forever.
Ten years later I feel as though I live in a country divided over many issues. But I stand knowing on September 11th, 2011 as the towers tore open and as the world as I knew it changed forever, at one point we were one. A french journalist said at the time "We are all Americans!" the whole world grieved for this tragedy. Today I remember that we are all humans. I pray for and am thankful for those who protect me. And especially for those that work toward peace, world peace not just as a catch phrase, but peace in each of our own lives, in our own worlds.
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2 comments:
You said it beautifully.
Right after the second tower was hit, I was made aware that the world had changed immediately after reaching for the ringing telephone on the dresser next to my bed. I'd been sound asleep and don't know if I looked at the caller ID or not; I just wanted the loud noise to stop so I could continue sleeping. I had a business trip the next day and knew it was going to be a long day once I got up.
"Heelllooo?"
The voice on the line was my littlest sister, Catheryne, Cate, Catie-Brat. "They're doing it on purpose! They mean to do it!"
Confused, just seconds from some dream or other, I soon was stunned as she in a few words explained what had occurred over the previous few minutes. "Turn on your TV!"
Watching the TV, my mind recalled a Discovery Channel special on the Twin Towers and the number 250,000 popped out as the total of employees and visitors, both tourists and business people that would pass through the trade center each day. The math part of my brain began calculating the number of people per floor, adjusting for the work day not being quite started on the East Coast, and my conciousness recoiled at the estimates that were being produced in my head.
Unbidden, physics class data on the acceleration of gravity and the terminal velocity of a body flashed into my mind as I realized that some of the debris falling from the towers was actually people.
Surely the building wasn't actually leaning as it appeared to be on the TV screen. Was the damage that great? Maybe I watch too much Discovery Channel, but I thought of another program that had documented a structural flaw in the 59 story Cit-Group building in NYC. Until repaired, the flaw could have led to the building tipping over if hit by winds of sufficient force from a specific direction. I remembered that someone in the program had said that it could have been like dominos if it had fallen into the building next to it. I wondered if the Tower was really leaning, what kind of domino effect would it cause?
Even though I was watching with a degree of horror, it still hadn't really struck my core. I was observing, I was calculating. However, in the moment that the scene on the TV changed to a view of a column of smoke, with a building in the foreground that I knew was a Smithsonian building, a feeling of personal dread struck me. Even before the announcers could summarize what they were being told over their earpieces, I knew in that instant that DC had been hit. It wasn't just New York. It wasn't just a "we'll show you" attack on the World Trade Center. This was an attack on the nation as a whole. They wanted us to die. Would the attacks roll across the country as the morning progressed? After DC, what was next? They wanted me, my family, my friends, my loved ones, dead.
In that realization, the Twin Towers weren't just far away. They were mine. I'd stood on the sidewalk outside them just a few years before. Flights from Boston had been used as weapons, an airport that I flew to reqularly to visit our corporate offices. As the first tower collapsed, I wondered how many had been able to get out, how many were trapped above, how many first responders had been going up. I knew I had witnessed the death of hundreds, if not thousands of individuals in those few seconds.
I called a friend in California. She was home alone. The TV off. She didn't know. I wished I hadn't called, not because I was scared to tell her, but because I would be robbing her of a few remaining moments of peace. My tears began to flow as I realized that it would be me
that changed her world.
Five days later, a field of flags picketing the lawn of a local church, I stepped out the doors after the service. A lone bagpiper stood amongst the flags playing the wailful tones of Amazing Grace.
My life had changed with the early ring of a phone and the hurried words of my baby sister, "They're doing it on purpose!"
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