It started while I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking about 9/11. For those of us who didn't live it directly, it was a long time ago. A callous has formed over the horror of the day. But listening to the radio this morning peeled back the protective coating and started to bring the feelings back.
What hit me the hardest was the interview of the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that lost the most people in the twin towers. The magnitude of the loss became real when he described how they would have had to go to 20 funerals a day for 35 days to honor everyone who'd died. Instead he decided to keep the business going in order to support their families. He broke down when he described how his brother had called their sister that day. He was in the building and called her to say that he knew he was going to die. He was saying goodbye.
It all started to come back to me. My daughters were in elementary school and I was lazing on the couch listening to Howard Stern on the radio. (Don't judge me). The show was broadcast from New York. It was on the show that I heard there was a fire at the World Trade Center, and that it might have been hit by a plane. At this point it still seemed to be an accident. Out of curiosity I turned on my TV just in time to see the 2nd plane hit the other tower. On live TV. The announcers went silent.
It took a few moments for the horror to sink in. It was a passenger jet. There were people in those towers.
The rest of the morning was surreal. It was a beautiful day here in Ohio with a clear blue sky. I couldn't pull myself away from the TV. I saw the towers fall. It was sickening to think that people were dying that day just because they had gone to work, or had decided to travel. It was hard to reconcile what I was watching with the lovely September day.
Then the TV people started talking about other explosions elsewhere. The Pentagon had been hit. There was a rumor (later found to be untrue) that there was an explosion on the West coast. A plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. All flights were being grounded. I honestly felt that I had no idea what could happen next, or where.
One immediate reaction was to reach out to family and friends, even ones not in harm's way. Maybe we were being reminded how fragile and random life and death could be and we just wanted to connect. My mom called, supposedly about my husband's birthday the day before, but that really wasn't the purpose of the call. It was to hear my voice. I called Tom at work just needing to hear his voice. Some parents started picking up their kids from school. I opted not to because I didn't want them seeing what was happening, and I didn't know how I was going to explain it to them.
The other scary thing was that Oberlin is home to an air traffic control center that basically coordinates the airspace between New York and Chicago. There was fear it, too, could be a target. Miriam's grade school was just blocks away. They kept all the children inside at recess and told the kids it was because there were too many bees on the playground.
The plane that crashed in Shanksville made it's fatal turn and started heading back east in Oberlin airspace.
The next few days continued to be surreal. There was no drone of airplane engines, no jet trails in the sky. People were rushing to donate blood, but it sadly wasn't really needed. People either survived relatively unscathed, or they died.
If there was any silver lining at all, it was that we were briefly reminded of our common humanity. We were kind. I remember saying "Hi" to someone on the street (a small town thing to do), and the person met my eyes and warmly responded. We were making a connection.
Sadly, this did not last.
We were a more naïve nation then. For those of us too young to remember Pearl Harbor, the worst event we'd lived through was the Oklahoma City bombing. Also horrific. I was taking a college theater class at that time and we took a whole class to talk about our feelings surrounding that event. I remember saying that I was really disturbed that this was going to raise the bar for terrorist attacks. I did not know how much worse it would get.
We're more jaded now, I think. We're sadly accustomed to mass shootings and when we hear about terror attacks we're likely to think "Oh no, not again". And move on. Just part of the crazy world we live in.
Today I say a prayer for everyone who lost their lives that day. I remember the incredibly brave first responders. I also say a prayer for every soul that was wounded having experienced the attack first hand. And for those who lost loved ones. They will never forget.
And neither will we.
