When the phone rang at 7:30 AM, waking me from a deep sleep, I knew instantly something must be wrong. I headed slowly, sleepily and with dread to its insistent sound only to miss the call before it rolled to voicemail. Looking at the Caller ID, I saw my sister in Colorado’s number, and as the red voicemail light began to flash, considered whether to call her right back or listen to her message first. Please don’t let it be one of her kids, I thought, although the other possibilities were all terrible, too, and decided to ease into the badness of whatever it was by listening to her message first.
As I told her a short time later, “Of all the things I thought you might be calling to tell me, that was the last one I ever would have imagined.”
“I’m sorry to wake you up, but I think you should know that our country is under terrorist attack,” her message began in urgent but surprisingly calm tones. “I just watched the World Trade Center collapse on TV. They’ve also attacked the Pentagon.”
I was still trying to absorb these nearly incomprehensible words when she went on to say that she thought our brother and sister-in-law who lived outside DC were fine, but that she was worried about our other sister, who lived and worked in Manhattan and often went to the WTC for meetings. She hadn’t been able to reach her. She added that she hoped that her husband, who worked for the federal government in Denver, would be sent home soon (she didn’t need to say why). She finished up with a thought I hadn’t even had yet, “You’re probably OK where you are – I haven’t heard anything about the Bay Area being a target. But I thought you should know what’s going on.”
After listening to this litany of possible harm that could come to my family, all of whom seemed to live or work in major target areas, I turned on the TV while frantically dialing her number. We’d barely begun to talk when I saw a replay of what she’d watched as it was broadcast live – the towers collapsing. Still groggy and disoriented, I truly couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and wondered if I was having a particularly vivid and realistic dream. We Californians get used to the East Coast having an entire morning of life before our day even really begins. But today it had had an entire morning of death while I slept peacefully unaware.
I’ve lived in California for most of my life, but I spent my first eleven years living just outside DC. My father worked at the Pentagon for over 20 years, and the one reassuring thought I had that day was gratitude that he wasn’t still alive to see it burning, as it would have broken his heart. The destruction of 9/11 would have agonized him, and no doubt brought back bitter memories of Pearl Harbor, where he’d fought fires at Hickam Air Field immediately after the Japanese attack. That had been one of the defining experiences of his life, solidifying his desire to serve his country, even if he couldn’t do so in the military (having a withered leg from childhood polio). Instead he parlayed the mechanical aptitude that had led him to work for pioneers of aviation and his natural gift for management and organization into a series of executive positions at the Department of Defense. Towards the end of his life, he’d told my sister that if he could put one word on his tombstone, he’d want it to be “Patriot.” I couldn’t help but think of the horror and anger he’d feel at seeing his country attacked again.
But memories of my father were pushed aside by worries about my oldest sister in Manhattan. “We just had lunch at Windows on the World when I was there on my last visit,” came my other sister's disembodied voice over the phone while I watched the TV unfurl images of destruction. “She goes there quite often.” It began to sink in that someone I knew might be in that surreal pile of smoke and rubble that I stood staring at disbelievingly on a TV screen. It still didn’t seem real, and never did no matter how many times I saw it replayed -- because what it was telling me made no sense at all.
Hours later, we found out my sister was away on a business trip, and was so concerned about her friends and co-workers back in New York that she’d been busy making calls to check on them without considering that her family would be worried about her. Once all family members were accounted for, our relief turned to horrified sympathy for those who weren’t as lucky as we were, mere bystanders to tragedy.
That morning I’d called K. to wake and tell him the news at his (then separate) home. We spent the day at his house, huddled in front of the TV for hours before finally turning it off and moving out into the bright September sun that had also glinted off the planes before they crashed. Sitting in his backyard under the still-green trees, we talked about the deepest of feelings and thoughts, about the meaning and fragility of life, about our fears of an impending war -- and I can’t tell you a single specific thing we said.
Later, sheepishly wondering if it was wrong to make love on a day of so much death and horror, we held each other closely, touching the flesh that was still gratefully there, tracing the living face that looked into ours, murmuring words of love that we still had voice to give. And with each caress, my heart was stroked with sorrow, knowing that today and tonight and for all the days and nights to follow, there were thousands of people who would never be able to do this very thing again with the person that they loved. Who was I to escape such grief, by the luck of where I lived?
In the middle of the night after that endless day, I was awakened from a fitful sleep by the sound of planes overhead. With all legitimate air traffic halted, I assumed attackers were headed to nearby San Francisco, and woke K. up with a terrified cry of “Planes!”
“It’s the military,” he murmured, referring to the nearby Naval Air Station, before falling immediately back to sleep.
The next morning he told me that he’d found the sound reassuring, evidence of guardians protecting us as we slept. But I lay awake even more troubled than before, hearing that low drone echo in my mind, the opening notes in the war that I feared was to follow.
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Comments
Scared the crap out of me. But like you, knew that people were on watch for us.
Geat read and rated with hugs
We Californians get used to the East Coast having an entire morning of life before our day even really begins. But today it had had an entire morning of death while I slept peacefully unaware."
One of the most surrealist things for me were in the days and weeks following, looking into the planeless sky. In our livetime, this was the only period of time that planes did not fill the skies over America. msp
An hour later I got a call on my cell phone from my boss. I worked in a hospital three thousand miles from the attacks, but no one knew what might happen next, and all management staff were being called in to work. The honeymoon was over, and we drove home.
Which actually was fine with us. Given all that happened we were no longer in the mood to have fun and see the sights. It was a sad end to a honeymoon, but nothing like the sadness that many other people experienced that day.
But on the other hand, I don't think we gain insight or understanding only from what happens to us -- if that were true, it would mean a complete lack of empathy. I think we can also gain much from what doesn't happen as well, from the near misses and from the feelings we have for others who weren't as lucky as we were on a given day. That's what makes us human.
But also, as others noted, we all did experience this event, even if only on TV. It caused a gash in our national psyche. How people dealt with that gash at the time or are still dealing with it is utterly personal, and yet I think utterly relevant to where our country has gone since. If tens of millions of people in this country who had no connection to any "actual" victims on 9/11 didn't feel emotionally affected by it, they would not have supported candidates, policies and media organizations who have used that event to great political effect in the years since. To ignore or dismiss that emotional impact is to lose something quite valuable -- an understanding of where we are today and why, as well as how to get to where we'd rather be.
OK, soapbox mode off. To respond more specifically:
Linda, I've never found the sound of planes so ominous. It made me realize in a visceral way what it would be like to live in a war zone and feel that all the time.
OE, thanks. And yes, the silence was a bit eerie, especially for those of us on flight paths. Kind of nice once you got used to it, though, and appropriate in a solemn sort of way.
Barry, thank you so much. My father was much on my mind that day and afterward. People sometimes mention how the Pentagon crash and its victims get little attention. It was very real to me, since my father had worked there and I'd been there as a child. It occupies a large space in my family's collective psyche that is hard to explain.
Connie, Sheila and Kit, thanks!
Kathy, I think that hearing about an experience from all angles is fascinating. And there's a real strangeness to being distant from an event you might otherwise be part of. I was flying back from the UK when I heard about the huge firestorm in my city of Oakland that had destroyed 3,000 homes and killed dozens of people. I saw the aftermath, but I missed the event that affected so many people I knew.
Lea, thanks. I think we often feel distant from things out here -- unless of course it's the earth moving under our feet!
Jeanette, I agree that these big events break people open in ways that are very revealing to see and hear about. I saw that after the big quake, which I did experience directly. People behaved very differently in the aftermath.
if one word could be put on the tombstone of the 3K victims, it would be "nanothermite"
-R-
By the time I got to work, the Pentagon had been hit, and I was furiously trying to remember if I knew anyone, who was in either Manhattan or DC. Both my mother and step-father had died in early '01, and they were very much on my mind -- funny how public loss becomes personal.
For months, I couldn't look at the Lower Manhattan skyline and breathe normally; the skyline now looked to me like a smile missing teeth. And in May of 02, I was in Manhattan, at a hotel with views of Ground Zero; the first day, I was able just to look at the pit, but the second morning, I left the hotel early and saw that the street was wet. I asked the doorman how this could be since there'd been no rain, and he said, "They wash the street down every morning -- bio matter, you know." That statement brought home the human tragedy, and I chose not to check out Ground Zero from the observation platform.
And now, five years later, I despair at how many of my fellow Americans have become exactly what the 9/11 attackers believed them to be. But I'll listen to the reading of the names tomorrow at Ground Zero, and think about the losses at the Pentagon and the bravery of the people on Flight 91.
That phrase hit me hard, expressing the possible presence of evil and destruction in even the most peaceful scene.
Great post, Nelle.