September 11th, 2001
Evening
Towards the end of the afternoon, the silence in the skies was replaced by the occasional searing roar of military planes flying over. I heard from other co-workers that military aircraft were flying all over the country, doing reconnaisance. In our area they were keeping coastlines and cities secure. Given the national emergency, I was heartened that they were there. But I can't explain how badly I wanted to hear a civilian plane fly over. I would've welcomed the ear-splitting roar of a commercial jet, or the petulant whine of a chartered lear.
When I got home that evening, I walked in the door, fed my dog, hooked up the TV, and turned it on. And then I finally saw what had been on everyone's mind all day.
How do you even begin to describe an act that stabs your entire nation right in the heart?
I saw a gaping hole in the ground in Pennsylvania, where courageous passengers, knowing they were going to die, had managed to wrestle United Flight #93 into the ground before its hijackers could take it to its final target.
I saw a chunk sliced out of the Pentagon, the headquarters of the most powerful military force in the world. I saw the scar left behind by American Airlines Flight #77, full of flame and smoke, tangled wires, twisted girders, and half-crushed offices bared to the world.
And then I saw New York.
Over and over again I watched, just like I had as a 13-year-old girl when the Challenger exploded. Except this was far bigger than the Challenger . Over and over again, I finally saw the two 767's plough into the World Trade Towers, screaming in with the sounds of a juggernaut and erupting into a shattering explosion of flame and debris. It was like a train wreck or an auto accident: I didn't want to stare at the horrendous trauma happening on the other side of the continent, but I couldn't stop watching. It was as if I simply couldnšt believe it, as if I had to keep looking, as trapped in sickening, stomach-turning horror as I was, because if I stopped seeing, then it would stop being real. And this is something so terribly real that it can't be denied.
Then I saw the Towers fall.
The one thing I can remember most vividly is seeing the giant antenna on top of the burning North Tower slowly crumble and start to fall in a shower of smoke, and I wanted so badly to be able to reach out my hand and grab that antenna and stop the building from falling. I knew there were still people in there, firefighters and trapped office workers and maybe tourists. As I watched I heard the estimated numbers of dead and missing. No one would come up with a concrete number for several days. At the time, I think authorities were estimating a worst-case scenario. I heard numbers close to 10,000.
Watching the Towers fall from 3000 miles away was sickening enough. I can't even grasp what it must've been like to have been there while it was happening. I can't possibly imagine what it would've been like to be there at all, during any part of the disaster (and the ensuing recovery and cleanup). I'm not even going to pretend that I know what that would be like.
I'm lucky. I didn't lose anyone I knew in any of the attacks. My friend who'd gone to Columbia managed to contact her friends in New York, and though they were badly shaken, none of them lost anyone either. One of my friends, a co-worker, lost someone who was on one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center. But otherwise, all I can blessedly say is "A friend of a friend"
But even though I didn't lose anyone that day, I think we all lost something that day. Maybe not a friend, a co-worker, a relative, or our workplace; most of us don't have a gaping, burning hole in our city's skyline. Somehow, though, I've always thought of New York as an American city -- it doesn't just belong to the people of New York State. In a way, it belongs to all of us, love it or hate it. Somehow the loss in New York wasn't just a loss for New York, it was a loss for the entire nation. Same with the Pentagon. Same with Pennsylvania.
After I was home on the 11th , I logged onto an online forum to talk to friends of mine around the nation (and around the world). Like everyone there that evening, I was totally in a daze. At one point I made the comment that I didn't feel like I was in America anymore. A friend logged on from the UK astutely replied, "Well, you're certainly not in the America that you were 24 hours ago."
Four hijacked planes, three targets, half a dozen ruined buildings, and 6000 casualties later, I can't imagine we'll ever be the same as a nation again.