[This post originally appeared on September 11, 2011.]
I've struggled with whether to blog about my memories of September 11, 2001, as suggested at Geneabloggers.
It seems trite, somehow, a superficial way to treat the scariest, most
vividly horrific day of my life. But I've been thinking about that day
all weekend, and I want to write about it. So I'll write, and I think I may even hit "publish" when I'm done.
The
night of September 11, 2001, and the afternoon of the next day, I wrote
down my experiences, because I thought I'd want to remember them. I
didn't realize at the time that I wouldn't be able to forget if I tried.
I've never had to refer back to what I wrote when writing or telling
someone how I experienced the day. The memories are too vivid, and too
detailed. This will be long, I must warn you. I've tried to edit it
before, and I can only revisit the memories in minute detail. They don't
make any sense to me when I try to cover just the important points.
I
was a sophomore in HS, in Chemistry class, when an announcement was
made over the PA system. The assistant principal got on, and announced
that the principal was going to make an announcement. Then the principal
came on, and announced that two planes had been "purposefully" flown
into the Twin Towers. My first reaction was a flash forward, to some
time in the future, as I told my yet-unborn children how their
grandfather had been killed the day the World Trade Center was bombed.
I
specifically remember thinking "bombed," though I knew quite well that
the announcement had not said that the towers had been bombed. But what
word does the English language have for when you fly passenger planes
into skyscrapers full of people? "Bombing" was how we conceived of
terrorism at the time. It wasn't immediate that we were actually able to
settle on using the word "attack" to describe what had happened that
day. If you read other people's accounts of their memories, they are
often full of terrified phone calls telling them to turn on the TV
because "something happened in New York!" And so I thought "bombed,"
though I knew the word was inaccurate. But mostly, I just thought my dad
was dead.
But only for a split second. Immediately
thereafter, I went into what I suppose you would call "denial." It was
simply inconceivable that my dad could be dead. I wouldn't be able to
handle that. He just
couldn't be. And so, I went about my day. "If anything's
really wrong," I thought, "they'd tell me." (By "
really
wrong," I, in my adolescent self-centeredness, thought only of things
that would affect my own life.) I had two close friends in that class
who, I later found out, didn't know what at all to do with me. They knew
my dad worked in the Twin Towers, but I was not at all acknowledging
the fact. I simply did my chem lab. I burned my finger on some hot
glass. But I didn't talk about my dad. (My sister, a floor below me, I would later
learn, was crying and leaving class repeatedly to call my mom. I,
meanwhile, was acting as if everything would be okay, because, well, it
just
had to be.)
When my first of two periods of
Chemistry was over, an unusually large number of people were called
down to the office. I took comfort in the fact that Laura and I weren't
among them. If anything were
really wrong, they'd be calling us down to the office. All those kids who got called down,
those must
be the kids whose parents were injured or killed. Our dad must have
been okay. It didn't occur to me that it might be hours, if not days,
before some people were accounted for, and that there was no way that
anyone had heard from or about my father - or anyone else's - yet.
During
our second period of Chemistry, there was another announcement: a plane
had hit the Pentagon. And another: all after-school activities were
cancelled. And then, after that period - we were called down to the
office. I went to my locker first. I took the long way to get there. I
just didn't want to hear what they might be about to tell me. I ran into
a friend. She said she'd been looking for me, she wanted to talk to me.
I - not at all realizing the scope of what was happening, not realizing
that it must be first on
everyone's mind, not just my own -
thought she was going to tell me what the drama with her boyfriend at
the football game Friday night had been about. Instead, she asked how I
was. "I don't know," I answered. "I'm going to find out." How I was
depended entirely on what they told me in the office - and again, at
this point, I assumed that "they" (the office staff? my mother? the
authorities?) would know whether Dad was okay.
Outside
the office was a large crowd of students. One gave me a pinky-swear that
my dad would be okay. I thought that was inane, but didn't say so.
Another told me that my sister had been crying, really hard. I don't
remember who that was, and I'm glad, because it made me think that Dad
was dead and Laura had already been told. (She was probably just trying
to let me know that my sister needed me.) Another told me to go talk to
the woman wearing the red sweater. I went to talk to her. All she told
me - this was supposed to be the big moment of truth - was that Virginia
Ward was coming to pick me up. "I don't know who that is." But that was
the name she had. A friend suggested that it might be Virginia R*****.
She was the only Virginia we knew. Of course it was her. But I wasn't
thinking clearly.
She came to pick get us, and then we
had to go get my youngest sister at elementary school. Virginia asked me
to come inside with her, since I was the oldest. In the front hall -
there was a desk set up, anticipating the high demand for pulling kids
out of school - a teacher told us that the kids hadn't been told yet.
Virginia told me that I'd have to tell Anna, because she should hear it
from family. I was lost. I felt like just a kid myself. I didn't know
what was going on. How could this be my job?
As Anna
left her classroom, she put her chair on her desk, just like everyone
always had to do in elementary school. I seemed like such a normal,
everyday, childhood movement. I couldn't believe it could coexist with
what I was about to tell her. As we walked down the hall, she asked "Why
are we getting picked up?" and I had to tell her. "A plane hit Daddy's
office building." She reached out and held my hand. And then Virginia
added, reassuringly, "But the plane hit very high up, and your Daddy's
office was very low down, so I'm sure he'll be okay," or something to
that effect. I only remember the beginning of the sentence, because it
was new information to me. I hadn't known where the plane had hit, or
remembered what floor Dad's office was on, and I hadn't thought to ask.
When
we got to the house, there were lots of cars outside, and all I could
think of was the scene in "Cheaper by the Dozen" where (spoiler alert)
the kids come home after school, and they know something's wrong because
of all the cars lined up outside the house, and it turns out that their
father has died of a heart attack. If there are lots of cars outside,
then Dad must be dead!
We went inside, where a number
of my aunts and one uncle were, with my mom. Everyone was crying, and
everyone hugged us. I saw Mom crying; it was to be expected. I saw
several of her sisters crying; to be expected. But then I saw my dad's
sister's crying face, and I
knew he was dead. And then someone
said something along the lines of "there's nothing we can do but wait,"
and I realized for the first time that no one
knew anything yet. They were all just as clueless as I was. We were all waiting for news.
I
remember seeing a tower fall for the first time as I walked into the TV
room to greet my uncle, but I had no conscious awareness of what I was
seeing. My mom went upstairs, and Virginia came over and whispered to me
that maybe I should go up and check on her. This seemed
uncharacteristic of me (you'll recall that I've already mentioned my
adolescent self-centeredness), but I did it anyway. Mom said she just
wanted to shower. I came back down. Virginia left, but soon returned
with several pizzas and a few bottles of soda before leaving us to wait
and watch with family. No one was hungry.
Most of my
detailed recollection ends here. All the waiting was kind of a blur. I
don't really know what we did with ourselves, and what I do remember, I
don't remember in order. My aunt arrived, bringing with her my cousin
Grace, who was not quite 2 at the time. She was, for me, literally a
saving Grace. She prattled happily in baby talk, and let us occupy
ourselves with something other than the news and the worry. We colored.
She was just learning her colors, and that day, everything was "lello." I
thought that was ironic. Or symbolic. Something. I noticed, as we stood
around coloring, the outfit I was wearing - new clothes, because it was
the beginning of the school year. I had on a green three-quarter sleeve
shirt, with light blue jeans and a black belt. I made a mental note not
to ever wear that exact outfit again - whether out of respect or
superstition, I'm not quite sure, but I know I never did it.
At
one point, Grace and I were alone in the play room, coloring. The phone
rang. There was a bit of a commotion. I couldn't tell whether it was a
good commotion or a bad commotion, and I couldn't make out anyone's
words. I was terrified. For a minute, I couldn't bring myself to go into
the other room. I wanted to stay where I was, pretend I hadn't heard
anything, and not have to hear whatever they had learned. I forced
myself to pick Grace up and go into the living room, where my mom said,
"That was Lester's wife Leann. Dad and Lester are walking uptown
together."
We didn't have any details - Dad and all of
his friends had been trying to get in touch with their wives, but the
cell phone service was overcome by demand, and most of them couldn't get
through. When Lester finally reached his wife, I guess, she was given a
list of numbers to call to let everyone's family know that they were
alive. My family is probably not the only one that thinks fondly and
gratefully of Leann, though most of us have never met her. On such a
terrible day, she was the one tasked with the telling of good news, and
we who received that good news have never forgotten her.
The
rest of the afternoon became about logistics. Locating Dad, and other
relatives at work in the city, and trying to get them home. No one could
drive into the city, Dad's car was stuck in a parking garage near
Ground Zero (though we had yet to hear the phrase) and mass transit was
suspended. Who could get the closest to a bridge or tunnel, to pick them
up as soon as they got onto the New Jersey side? How could we organize
it? We got one phone call from Dad, from a restaurant he had stopped at,
but after that he was difficult to reach.
We played
soccer on the front lawn at one point. We might have watched a movie? My
aunt brought my cousin by after picking her up from school, "because of
Uncle Kevin." I hadn't even been sure that
I would be picked up from school, and Uncle Kevin was my
dad. I was only beginning to comprehend how much bigger this was than just how it affected me.
People
were stopping by the house, some of them not even knowing that Dad had
been in the World Trade Center. The best man at his wedding happened to
be in town - I was reminded that it was my parents' anniversary. A
coworker of his, who had mercifully taken a vacation day, dropped
something off. Neighbors, friends, everyone wanted to see how we were.
Late
that afternoon, two of my friends came by the front door. I stood on
the step and talked to them for a while. They asked about my dad; they
told me how school had gone after I left. They told me that Samantha
D*** had been crying in gym class. "Why?" I asked. They looked at me
like I was crazy. "Because of your dad." I was still so focused on how I
was being affected that I wasn't aware of what the attack meant to
other people, those who knew my family and those who didn't, those who
were in the towers and those who weren't.
Then we saw
someone walking up the road, his shoes in his hand. I assumed it was
some dumb teenager. Who else would carry his shoes in his hand for no
good reason? "Who is that?" I asked. My friend faltered. "I . . . I
think it's your dad." It hadn't occurred to me that he would be
walking home,
and so it hadn't registered that it could be him. I stayed on the step,
unsure of what to do. Should I run to him, or run inside to tell
everyone else that he's home?
Suddenly, my mom burst
out of the side gate, somehow having seen him coming from the backyard.
She was followed by my sisters, my grandmother, and everyone else at my
house. I, too, went over to them, and we had our reunion near the top of
our next door neighbor's driveway.
There's more, of
course: the church service that night; doing my math homework before
bed, since I was pretty sure my new math teacher was so strict she
wouldn't find even a national and personal tragedy to be a reasonable
excuse for not handing in your homework; crying on the soccer field the
first day that after school activities returned, as the physical
exertion finally caused my emotions to overflow; the dreams I had in the
weeks after, where I watched my dad die on TV; gathering at my
grandmother's on Friday, with a "God Bless Kevin" cake, so that everyone
who had worried about my dad could see him. My experience of September
11 extended well past the hours of the actual day. There are things that
happened months or even years later that I consider part of my memories
of that day.
