I was in a townhouse in Alexandria, VA, in the kind of happy, I-can-do-anything mood that a clear, crisp, new-school-year morning brings. I'd just returned from dropping the two older kids at pre-school. I set the baby down and listened to my phone messages, which included a chilling question from my mother, calling from work:
Has anyone heard from Aunt ---- yet?Having no idea what that might be about (and thinking in health crisis terms), I called my father, whom I found at home. I can't describe it, but I won't forget the tone of his voice when he answered the phone, nor his response to the question what's going on?
We seem to be under some kind of attack.While he was explaining about the WTC towers, he suddenly said
J----!And then, in that same strange tone --at once devastated and matter-of-fact-- he said he thought something bad had just happened at or near the Pentagon, judging by the direction of the sound. By this time I had the television on and had seen the footage of the crashing planes. It was ABC, the channel that came in best since we didn't have cable.
The next few minutes are a blur. Aunt ---- lives directly across from the towers, so everyone in the family was trying frantically to get through to her. I remember being on and off the phone to various relatives and friends in New York, and mostly getting a lot of
All circuits are busymessages. Which sounded ominous in the circumstances. Then there was a call from a cousin saying Aunt ---- was alright and on her way uptown to the cousin's place. So I was back on the phone with my dad relaying the news that his sister was alright when I heard the late Peter Jennings say almost off-handedly, shocked, "There it goes" and watched the South Tower fall.
At some point I had to go and pick up the kids; I recall the radio news swirling with false reports about hijacked planes being spotted all over town. At least twice we were told that bombs had gone off in federal buildings, and there was speculation about attacks on the subway system, so of course I was mortally anxious about Mr. W., while at the same time laboring not to upset the kids. I'm sure I didn't sit in front of the tv all day terrifying them, but the only clear memory I have of the rest of the day was watching the news endlessly, hoping to hear news of rescues, and almost needing to see the towers fall over and over, as if to convince myself it was real. [Update: Mr. W. reminds me of some details I'd forgotten: that he would not believe me when I said the towers had fallen, and that part of the Metro system was shut down, so I had to navigate impossibly crowded highways (the Metro shut-down played havoc with the traffic) to a distant station to collect him from work. That explains why I had the radio on for so long.]
Besides praying for the souls of the dead and being grateful my Aunt had survived, I recall thinking two thoughts. One was horror at the human capacity for evil --how could a person do such a thing? There was immense sorrow for the victims and their families and horror at the manner of their deaths, but also a feeling I can't describe very similar to the way I felt when thinking about the Columbine murderers --a sick sense that I'd watched souls choose to go to hell. There are things worse than death, you know, and they are terrible to contemplate.
The other thought was that "America" was over. That from this point forward there would be no open borders and freedom of movement, but we'd become like Israel --onerous security checkpoints at every turn, and everyday life punctuated by explosions at pizzerias and such.
The next morning, our Saudi diplomat neighbors were gone without a trace, and a national conference in Rhode Island where I'd been scheduled to speak was cancelled. No one could get there. Our eldest son's godmother was stranded in LA and had to rent a car and drive herself home to Virginia. And I started an earnest email correspondence with certain friends and relatives about the war that eventually morphed into this blog --I decided to stop harrassing people's in-boxes and let them check in with me--or not-- at their leisure.
Update: I stepped away from my desk for awhile and remembered a couple of other details. I recall that as the second tower fell, I had a sudden flashback to eating with my Aunt at Windows of the World or whatever that restaurant at the top of the WTC was called, and thinking of all the immigrant waitstaff that were perishing in this attack on "Americans." And I also suddenly remembered the eerie silence of those days. We lived so close to Reagan airport at the time that there was nearly constant sound of airplanes passing, and then suddenly silence. And then suddenly, airplanes again, but this time fighter jet patrols --how that was scary before we realized what it was, and then, strangely comforting. And remember all those emails telling people to go outside and light candles at particular times in the evening in remembrance, or solidarity, or defiance and what not? I remember seeing a man-on-the-street interview with residents in the neighborhood of Ground Zero. They were all wearing American flags, and I recall remarking to my husband that there were Americans in Battery Park City again.
