On September 8, 2001...my roommate and I were in New York City. We were staying at the Millenium Broadway, in town for the MTV Video Music Awards. We'd hit the awards shows, we'd shopped, we did some touristy things, we sat up in bed that evening, the night before our plane was scheduled to leave, and I said something that to this day haunts me:
"We should stay a few more days...I have never been to the top of the World Trade Center. We could go."
"Yeah, we should..." she'd replied.
And as impulsive as we both always were at that time of our lives, for some uncharacteristically responsible reason, we decided that we ought to head home on our flight the next day. The WTC would be there the next time we went to New York.
On September 9th, we flew home from New York City and by the 11th, were back to work. I was working as a nanny and had Caroline, who was just shy of a year old, sitting with me while we watched tv. The first plane had hit by the time I tuned in. I wasn't even sure what was going on at the beginning...if it were just a freak accident or something more sinister. I called Ryan...he and I have an ongoing 'scoop' war, where we each try to 'scoop' the other with breaking news and information. I called my roommate. I called both of my parents. I called my Grandma, and I was on the phone with her watching as the second plane approached. I remember a VERY CLEAR sense of relief. You know when there's a wildfire and they send in those planes to dump water on the fire from the air? That's what I thought that plane was. I though, "Oh, Thank God, they are trying to put this out." And then as I talked to my Grandma, that plane hit the second tower. I remember feeling as though I'd had the wind knocked out of me. "Oh my God, " my Grandma said, and I did too, and I think we both just repeated that several times. Neither of us knew what to say. I don't remember the rest of the conversation, except to say that we loved each other...which I know I said to everyone I talked to that day.
Like most of the rest of America, I sat literally glued to the television for the rest of the day. I watched the towers, burn, people falling like raindrops from hundreds of feet in the air because that seemed like a better option, and finally the towers fall. I remember the sick sympathetic fear I felt for those people, the ones that were trapped, the ones that jumped...to be forced to come to a decision such as that, I can't even fathom what they must have been feeling. I remember the heartbreak I felt for the people who had loved ones in those buildings...how terrifying it must have been to have not known if you husband or wife, parent or child, or friend was safe or hurt or even alive.
It was the first event and I hope last that I ever experience, where the whole world, at least MY whole little world, stopped. We all got out of work early. No one knew what to do. Ryan and I went to Bahama Breeze for dinner, and we pushed food around the plate and felt guilty...because we felt like we were taking some kind of advantage of the day off, and it wasn't a day off to be celebrated and enjoyed.
America was supposed to be safe...we were in some kind of bubble where it seemed as though something of this magnitude should not have happened here, should not have been able to have happened here. But it had, and now that false sense of security was shattered. And thousands of innocent people that said goodbye to their loved ones like they did everyday and went off to work like they did everyday and sat wondering what was for dinner like they did everyday, never made it past 10:30am on that fateful day.
It has been 10 years. Nothing makes the clarity I have of that day disappear. My roommate and I were a "Yes, let's stay" away from being on the observation deck of that building. The lives that were lost, the bravery shown, the way that it changed America...these will forever be a part of my life.
It is more poignant to me this year than ever before...so my heart and thoughts go out to those who lost their lives that day, and to those who lost loved ones that day...and sincerest wish is that a no one ever have to face a catastrophic terror event such as this one was ever again.
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