9/11/2011 The FutureFineYoungMen and TheBoyScout checking out a real fire truck!
Learning the ropes!
Last year, we took the boys to deliver cookies to our firehouse, police station and the EMT's at our hospital, in honor of the many acts of service and sacrifice between strangers on 9/11/2001 at the WTC and the Pentagon. We also had an opportunity to provide dinner for a stranger. It was a GREAT DAY! I loved starting this family tradition with all my boys.
We're doing a repeat this year, as soon as TBS gets home from work. I love it when an opportunity to do something nice for someone else comes up. I'm hoping to teach my boys to love it too.
On 9/11/2001, I had only lived in Annandale, VA - a short 20 minutes south of DC - for nine months. I was a nanny, and I was taking 18-month-old Alex to the library that morning. When I couldn't find the book I was looking for, I went to ask for some help. Several women were huddled together over something on a work counter behind the main counter. I waited a moment, but when no one offered to help me, I said, "excuse me," and I was shooshed by several of the women who kept their eyes glued to something. Then one of them said her husband worked at the Pentagon. That's when I saw the radio, though I had no idea what they were listening to, or what her husband working at the Pentagon had to do with the children's book I was looking for.
When I got back to the house a little after 10am, I turned on the Today Show. Katie Couric's voice was saying that the South Tower had just fallen. From the ticker at the bottom of the screen, I learned what she was talking about. I was watching the live coverage of billowing smoke overtaking downtown Manhattan from across the Hudson, and I couldn't make sense of it.
The words weren't sinking in. I kept waiting for the smoke to clear and for both towers to become visible.
Then the coverage changed to a live report of what had happened earlier at the Pentagon. Then there were reports about a plane heading for the capitol building. It took me a couple of minutes to register what was actually going on. My brain literally wasn't connecting what my eyes were seeing with the words that were cramming into my ears. Once the realization started sinking it, all I could do was cry. By then, they were replaying footage of the South Tower collapsing.
My cell phone rang and it was my good friend Rebecca asking me to call her parents in Utah and let them know she was okay. She worked for the Dept. of the Interior, and had been evacuated from the government building she worked in. Her cell phone hadn't been able to dial through to them, so she tried me. She said there were tons of people filling the streets, police cars and army trucks swarming into traffic, and she couldn't believe what she was seeing in person, but she was fine. She was going to try to get home. After speaking with her parents briefly, I watched as the second tower fell. Again, my brain was sluggish. There was nothing in my experience as a human being that I could relate the images and sounds and sentences of those long minutes to. There was no frame of reference for my mind to pigeon-hole it into.
I didn't know it at the time, but my future husband was working in downtown DC at the Hart Senate Building for Senator Craig that morning. It was only his second day as an intern there. He'd moved to DC from Idaho the week before. He was one of the countless people who had been evacuated and forced to walk home when the Metro (subway) was shut down. It took him and a few of his new co-workers several hours to reach the closest of their apartments.
Alex's dad worked for the National Science Foundation, and had also been sent home. Rebecca and I and several of our friends gathered together in the afternoon at a local restaurant to watch the news together and (of all things) eat nachos. That night, we attended a prayer service with our congregation and received words of comfort from our Bishop.
For most of the next three days, none of us could stay away from the TV. People weren't allowed back to work. Planes weren't flying overhead. Regularly scheduled programming - literal and figurative - had been interrupted indefinitately. The footage was heart-breaking. Endless replays of the events, stories of family members missing, desperate loved ones searching and crying and puting up posters and pleading for help. Firemen streaming into downtown Manhatten and others coming away from "the pile" covered in who knew what.
Finally, on Friday, we all agreed we could take no more. We threw together a plan to get out of town and go camping in the Shenandoahs. It was the best decision I could have made. No radio, no TV, just time with friends and nature. We were reminded that even though things would never be the same - we would never be able to get those images out of our heads - the most important things were still true. Seeing, hugging, talking to a loved one - those are the most precious gifts we'll ever get to take for granted in this life. The world, though suddenly full of real threat and menace, was also still beautiful and full of good people who would sacrifice their own life to try and help another get out of danger.
When we got back into town, our hearts had been lifted - some. Sunday night, we got back together and went to see the Pentagon for ourselves. We could only get as close as the hill at the street corner across from the parking lot, but we could see the American flag draped over the terrible hole and we could see the equipment and men who were still at work there.
A couple of weeks later, when flights over the DC area were allowed to resume, the sound of a commercial airplane overhead was chilling for the first while. When I flew home for Christmas, it was weird that for the first and last half hour of the flight out of and into Dulles Airport, no one was allowed to get out of their seats. It was weird looking around the plane and knowing that so many people just a few months before had taken for granted that they would be landing in their destinations.
This morning, on this eleventh anniversary, I gave my husband an extra hug and kiss as he left in his shirt and tie and suit pants to go to work. I couldn't help the lingering thought of all those people who didn't know it would be their last ever good-bye kiss that morning. I can't imagine, and I don't want to.
This afternoon, as I sit writing what has become a lengthy and somber post for my silly little blog, I know how lucky I am to have my loved ones all around me. There are many things I wish I could forget about those long sorrow and tear-filled days. Since I can't forget, I'll remember to be grateful for my family, my health, my safety, and the comfort that God pours out on all of us when we need it most.
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