Nine-Eleven

I watch all of the 9/11 coverage every year. I don’t say I “still” watch, as that implies the event is an afterthought.

It should be, for all of us, at the forefront of our collective consciousness. Collective, as in American.

I work part time at my local elementary school, where both of my kids attended. The principal is a great guy. Last evening, he sent out a video to teachers, which was created by the History Channel, to show their students (if they wished). He described it as an event that “happened to New York.” I applaud his sentiment, but I disagree with his wording. It wasn’t something that just happened to New York City. It happened to all of us – the United States of America. It happened to Americans living in the northernmost tip of Alaska to those in the southernmost part of Florida.

I have the usual story that most adults around my age do of that day. I was on my way to work, heard of a plane flying into (on accident, I assumed) the North Tower of the World Trade Center. By the time I arrived at work, another plane had hit the South Tower. I was only on the job for a couple of weeks. When I asked what was happening a rude co-worker screamed in my face – “We’re being attacked!”

I worked my eight hours, then went home. My husband and young son met me at the door and we embraced. A girlfriend of mine later told me that her husband called her at work and told her to leave immediately. Everything was crazy.

Another girlfriend and I were scheduled to fly out September 12 to see our friend in Las Vegas.  Instead, as everyone knows, flights were suspended for an unprecedented three days in America. When we finally did get the go-ahead, the airport was like a ghost town.

The eeriness wasn’t due to the amount of people in the airport, but rather the aura that surrounded everyone in it. People were quieter. Everyone seemed to move in slow motion. I looked at people and they looked back at me, our expressions understood without words being spoken. I felt we were all thinking the same thing – It could have been me. It could have been us on those flights, just a few days before, suspended in the sky with zero hope of surviving.

I was one of the first people on our flight to be routinely stopped and frisked. I choked up as I watched my girlfriend casually waved through by the boarding agents. Of course I had no reason to think I wouldn’t be able to get on the plane, but for a second, I almost wish I would have. My feet felt like lead as I was cleared and walked to the plane’s door.

I’m a nervous flyer – it’s known around my circle of friends. But as I looked into the cockpit while boarding the plane, tears swelled my eyes. I took the seat next to my friend, who I later found out had already warned the guy sitting next to me that I’d be crying, and let it all flow.

I know now I wasn’t just crying for me. Without fully comprehending nor being melodramatic about it, I was crying for people who recently, at some point on their fateful flights, realized quite possibly in a split second that they would not be seeing their families or loved ones ever again.