Where Were You?

(This is a slightly edited re-post of a piece I wrote last year in memory of the attacks of September 11, 2001. I am posting it again in observance of the ten year anniversary of that day. Won't you consider sharing your memories as well?)

Outside the sky was a brilliant blue, not even a wisp of a cloud dotted the horizon. Inside the home schoolroom however, storms were brewing. Only one week into the new school year and the excitement of unopened books and new school supplies seemed a distant memory, a cruel joke. My children bickered instead of working through assignments. Lacking patience to resolve conflict I reached for that desperate act most mothers resort to eventually, sending older sister to her room, hoping to salvage something of the morning.

After only a brief exile, my daughter returned from her bedroom. Before I could reprimand her, she said something was going on. She had been listening to the country radio station, and the announcer had said everyone should turn on the TV.

My first thought, upon hearing my daughter’s words, was that someone had shot the president. As with many in my generation, my earliest childhood memories are of watching news footage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Though I was only two years old at the time, I can still see my mother, sister, and myself sitting on the floor in our first floor apartment, watching the black-and-white television set with rabbit ears as my mother ate chicken salad.

I knew my children were witnessing a similar defining moment in their lives, one which would create an indelible mark in their memories and shape much of their lives from that point forward. We cried. We knelt by the coffee table and prayed. Then I told them to write about what they were witnessing. My son was eight years old at the time, and my daughter was not quite twelve. The following are their journal entries from that day, reflecting their original spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Son’s Entry: 9/11/01 Sunny

Planes crashed into the world trade center and the Pentagon, and it might be a war daddy is in Utah and the airports are closed. We were doing school and (sister) went to listen to her Radio, and then it happed. They said get your kids out of school and get them in front of t.v. so mommy went to go see what it was, and one plane crashed into the world trade center, then they said one crashed into Pentagon. Then the world trade center collapsed, then they said that another building collapsed.

Daughter’s Entry: 9/11/01                                                    Sunny                                                    Terrorism in America

Today the World Trade Center was hit by two airplanes. A scary deal. People hijacked the plane and flew it into one of the towers. Another followed in the next half hour. On my break I turned on my radio and they were telling people to take their kids out of school so I knew something was up. The tv was turn on and soon the first and second crash ended in the buildings collapsing. About 10,000 people died in the crash in New York. They are comparing it to Pearl Harbour. Much the same. We saw the second building collapse. White House was evacuated and so were all the important buildings. American and United Airlines were used as usage for bombs. The Pentagon was hit after the second tower was hit. There were a lot of people killed there and fire was pouring out everywhere.

Although I had asked my children to write about the day America was attacked, I hadn’t written about it until now. I want to remember that day, to remember how we had wept and prayed together, how we watched the horrible footage over and over, how we waited for news of rescue and survivors.

I’d forgotten how high the early estimates of casualties were, not that the numbers weren’t horrific enough. As my children had written, my husband was out West traveling on business. At first I wanted him home immediately, but all air traffic had been grounded. I called a friend whose husband was stationed at the nearby submarine base to see if, as a military wife, she had any more news than was circulating on the networks. She said only that her husband had called to say he’d be late. Once it occurred to me that my home was within striking distance of nuclear submarines, I no longer wanted my husband to come home. I figured he was safer from terrorists in the deserts and mountains of the West than we were on the East Coast, near a military asset. I had a full tank of gas and thought maybe I should just load up the kids and drive toward him.

People volunteered for blood drives. Flags flew. Strangers were kind to one another in the days following the attacks, when clouds of smoke continued to swirl in the streets of New York City. While walking through the parking lot of a shopping center, I saw an elderly woman back her car into that of another. I saw that she was visibly upset and, after making sure she wasn’t injured, tried to reassure her. “Everyone’s a little shaken these days,” I said.

I learned that a young woman from my hometown had been killed in the collapse of one of the towers. When I was a young girl with a paper route, her family was among my customers. A gangly, awkward, pre-teen, I always looked forward to the possibility that she might answer the door, offering her friendly smile and a few kind words. She was tall and beautiful and a member of the girls’ basketball team, and she made this shy, awkward girl feel so special when she came to the door to take the newspaper.  She was just one of so many beautiful people killed on that day.

Airplanes started flying again and when we heard one overhead, my children and I looked up as if seeing something for the very first time. My husband returned home, and a few short days later our family flew together out West. We had to get up much earlier than usual to undergo new search and security procedures. We saw dogs and soldiers and automatic weapons in an American airport. The flight attendants on our plane were visibly nervous, though trying hard not to appear so. I asked one how she was doing. She tried to assure me that she was okay, but then pointed to a large, muscular passenger seated next to me and said, “But if anyone gives me any trouble, I’m coming for him.”

When we arrived at our destination at a national park, a huge American flag flew against the red rock entrance and bright, blue sky, the same brilliant blue which had colored the sky before all the trouble began. A sign in front of a hotel read, “Thanks for traveling. God bless America.”

These are the things I needed to write down, to remember so I can tell them to generations to come. Things I want never, ever to forget.

On her outstanding blog, my friend Amy Sullivan has posted a number of suggestions of ways to commemorate the ten year anniversary of September 11. Won't you click over there and read some of her ideas? How about you? What are your plans for observing this anniversary?

This piece has also been posted in the online edition of (The Hartford Courant)