So the anniversary rolls around again, fainter yet and fainter as we put distance between ourselves, and a brilliant September day. A work-day then, a Sunday now, but still the great crack across our world-view, our basic assumptions, and for the families of some 3,000 a great jagged break in their lives. People set off for work, or to Disneyland, or headed home… grabbing a last cup of coffee, stuffing things into briefcases, focused on a day of travel, or at their desk, teleconferencing, checking out a suspected gas leak in the street, or pretending to pay attention to a cabin attendant going through the required safety brief. They were setting appointments, eating breakfast at their desk on the 102nd floor… and then the day stopped being ordinary, and everyone remembers where they were, and what they were doing.
Of course, some of us caught on faster than others; at mid-afternoon on the 11th, I was gently trying to explain to my employer why no one wanted to take calls, or come into the office to talk about their invention, that this whole planes-crashing-into-the-WTC-and-Pentagon thing was huge, unimaginably huge, and the repercussions would be enormous, and unforeseeable. (One of them being eventually the death of the enterprise I was employed by, but that is another story.) The planes being grounded— that’s what brought it home to him. The office in the Mercantile building had a gorgeous, unobstructed of downtown San Antonio, and the final flight-path of airliners coming in for a landing at the airport, sliding past our windows like beads on a string every few minutes… and then the sky was empty, and things were never quite the same again.
Reactions to 9/11 varied according to an infinite number of variables; how close to New York or the Pentagon, how connected to financial markets, or the media, or emergency services, or what kind of interest one had in politics, history, military, current events… but not always predictably. A fair number of people who had always been comfortably settled somewhere along the liberal segment along the range of political thought suddenly discovered their inner Jacksonian, moving abruptly and sometimes painfully into the conservative segment. Others, including many public intellectuals, moved farther along the range, and not a few toppled off the edge entirely… either that, or the spectrum itself lurched in the Jacksonian direction, leaving some like Lewis Lapham and Gore Vidal hanging from their fingertips and bleating about their own relevancy. And a clown like Ward Churchill could, thanks to weblogs and the internet, suddenly become all the more visible, and considerably less amusing to a national audience. The main-line news sources; newspapers, television, radio— they all have been stirred up, shaken out, questioned and dissected mercilessly by bloggers over the last four years, and in a couple of cases, actually driven to cover stories that ordinarily would have been passed over as irrelevant.
But it has been four years since that Tuesday morning. Children who were babies on that day are starting kindergarten this month. Children who were in the first or second grade that day, barely aware of anything more complicated than the alphabet, are on the verge of being teenagers in a world where the towers have never been, save in movies and history lessons. The reality of them, the solidity of steel and concrete fades and dissipates like smoke, shock and grief overlaid with time and the business of living in the world day to day. It is just something that has always been, and will go on for the forseeable future.
Indeed, the edges of my own memories are now blurred around the edges: in the last four years, my daughter deployed to the Middle East twice, my parents’ house burned to the ground, I have repainted and rehabbed my own kitchen, and gone to other employment , and taken over management of this weblog. We have gone through a bruising presidential election and a war on two fronts, we continue to face the threat of terrorism by international Islamic radical elements, and a slew of rotten Hollywood movies based on comic books and old TV shows. We have seen revolution in Lebanon, a tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, terrorism in Bali, Beslan and London… and a hurricane wrecking one of our major cities and a swath of coastal lowlands the size of most European countries. Yes, the world does move on…
But today, we remember.
…and I woke up to the sound of my crying neighbor saying, “Oh my God, you don’t KNOW.” My wife asking, “Don’t know what?” Boyo complaining about the channel being changed off of Cartoon Network or Nicktoons…”Oh my God…Tim get out here!” Rolling out of bed and into my shorts and pulling them up as I got into the living room and seeing my wife’s hand up to her mouth and her eyes like I never want to see them again and I looked at the TV just as they were showing a replay of the second plane going into the second tower and wondering why the other tower was already on fire and then it all just clicked and I grabbed my wife and son and tried to grab my rigid neighbor who was hugging herself and I just tried to breathe because after 17 years in the Air Force I knew exactly what this was.
And I prayed that day…more than I had in a very long time.
One of my cousins is a United Airlines pilot. So, in addition to the horror unfolding on TV that morning, we were worried for him, until we got a call from my uncle, at around !!:00am, saying he was ok.
Sitting in my cube, working out some systems problems. My wife called from home. She had just turned on the TV as they announced that an airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. As she spoke the other airliner hit the other tower.
“Why are the air traffic controllers routing airliners into buildings?”
“New York in under attack.”
I told the others in the office.
“You’re kidding?”, was the usual response.
Two Russians and two Indians working in our office knew it was not a joke and had opinions of who had done it. It turned out they were right.
A large screen TV that usually displays company logo and sales pitch was turned to television as the Internet access slowed to a crawl. There it was. What to do?
The head office in London called and they, too, were watching. They gave us their condolences and felt that it would be better to have the business close for the day, so we were released if we wanted to go home. What to do?
Give blood. Massachusetts General Hospital is about a half hour away. I’m on my way. Glad I thought of it. Hopped in the car. Light inbound traffic to Boston. All tolls were open.
I walked in to the area in the back of the building where I’m given blood many times. There was a line. What’s the line for? Someone with a clipboard approaches.
“Excuse me, I’m here to donate blood.”
“Take this card, you’re number 273.”
In little over an hour, 272 people from all over had signed up to give blood. I heard no blood donation appeal at this point. This was spontaneous. In short order the line behind me stretched out beyond my view. The people represented all classes, races and ages.
Americans.
Getting ready to go clean a house for someone and heard a guy on the radio say..turn on the set there’s a fire in NY, a tall building. Turned on to see the one tower a blaze, pick up the phone to call my best friend to watch at work and nearly drop the phone as I see the plane fly in..we both instantly knew who it was,”what was his name, tried to blow the up in ’93?” “Osama something” “yea, that’s him” “wow, you know this means we’re at war” “Oh my God, your right”. As I drove to the job, hardly any traffic I noticed, turned it on at the house and couldn’t believe all those folks still didn’t get it.
The days with no planes were hard, we always had the red eye from Atlanta fly over around 5:30 am and the last one at around 10pm, usually a United flight I believe (we live outside Birmingham, AL in Jefferson County) and it was quiet..too quiet. Life’s never the same..I still look up every time I hear a plane and say a prayer for them, for my family, for all of us…
I had been in Atlanta for just under 2 weeks, at that point. One thousand miles away from my heart-city of San Antonio, 500 miles away from my family.
I’m a tech trainer, and my job had relocated me to Atlanta on Labor Day weekend to be the resident instructor at one of our customers’ sites. I had to hit the ground running – had 3 days to compile a training guide (my predecessor’s guide was not very usable), and then began training the Monday after Labor Day. 12 students, 8 hours to cover 9-10 hours of material. I was new to the area, living in a hotel, new to this company (customer’s company), trying to learn their methods so I could incorporate them into the material I was presenting. I wasn’t paying much attention to the outside world at this point.
Until that Tuesday. Class starts at 8am, goes until 4pm. We took our first break around 930. I sent the students out, then headed for the coffee pot. As I was filling my cup, one of the employees saw me, and said “Oh, you dont know – you’ve been teaching.”
“Know what?”
“A plane was hi-jacked.” My brain flew to my memories from the 70s, when hi-jackings were semi-regular occurrences. So I asked:
“Where are they flying to?” expecting the response to be “Cuba,” or something similar.
She shook her head – “the hijackers flew it into the world trade center.”
My jaw dropped.
Breaktime was over, so I headed back into the classroom. As my students returned, I asked them if there was a tv showing news anywhere in the building. Then we all traipsed upstairs to the big breakroom, where it was standing room only to watch CNN.
I watched the towers fall, and could not fathom what I was seeing. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it, much as I can’t wrap my head around the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, or the Tsunami.
At lunchtime, I sat at my desk, gathering the news from my co-workers. I called my mom to let her know that I was NOT traveling that day, and essentially not affected, although I knew people who were.
One of my new co-workers was an NYC native – he had 2 aunts who worked at the WTC, and they’d not been heard from. He left work when the news hit, to be with his family. His niece was a student at the elementary school that was in the shadow of the buildings. We learned later that his niece was fine, one aunt was in the hospital with a broken pelvis, and one aunt was never found.
I knew it was war, and for the first time since my DOS in Dec 1991, I regretted not being in the military anymore.
Sometimes I still regret that.
On the cable news networks today, there was, of course, mention of 9-11, and coverage of the various memorial ceremonies.
What I did not see were many pictures of that day – pictures of the towers coming down, of people jumping, of the wreckage afterwards. No pictures, no video. Somehow, it has all been sanitized for our memories. I think that is wrong.
Every now and then, I find myself visiting those websites that have all those picturesfrom that day, just so I will not forget, just so the horror of it all will stay burned into my memory – fresh as on that day, and the days that followed as we struggled to cope and respond.
For the same reasons as above, I was one of those few individuals who was not opposed to showing the beheading videos on the internet. No, I wanted to SEE this enemy at work, to KNOW this enemy, to feelthe disgust not from just hearing the reports, but to feel it in my guts, and to burn it into my soul. And it changed me in a way that I cannot describe, and set me against them forever. I know that I am not alone, and that for every head the terrorists severed, a thousand enemies were created who longed for their final destruction.
Why are we so afraid to LOOK directly at what has been done to us by our enemy?
Is it because we want to forget? Do we think it will all just go away?
We forget too quickly, too easily…
Pingback: Speed of Thought
Kilo,
I think the not wanting to look is because if we face it head-on, we’ll have to admit that the only response is war. Most folks want to live in peace, and don’t realize that sometimes war is necessary. It doesn’t fit with their worldview.
And some of us prefer to know our enemy, and fully understand their capabilities, so we know what we’re up against and can face our future with open eyes.
In other words, some of us are wolves, and some are sheepdogs. The wolves prey on us, and the sheepdogs protect us, but their constant vigilance and their willingness to do violence on our behalf.
Days like that one never fade from memory. The things we saw and how we felt, and how we breathed – or held our breath – everything about that morning is crystal clear as if it were yesterday. It is burned indelibly into my brain, as indelibly as the overwhelming desire to put my uniform back on and report – somewhere – for duty.
I was lying in bed, Nurse Jenny had left for work, I was only a few weeks post back surgery, and was half-watching NBC news. I guess I was half-asleep when I heard something like, ..”an airplane”, and “..the WTC”. I opened my eyes and was instantly awake, not quite believing what I was seeing. The phone rang, I answered, and my sister-in-law was there, in a near-panic. I tried to calm her, and as we were talking, my eyes saw but my brain refused to acknowledge, a second plane fly into the other building. No calming of Janis’ panic now. I shot straight out of the bed, forgetting the back, now full of adrenaline. Now, there was no more talk of a terrible, inexplicable accident. We had to face the truth instantly; there was no more question, no attempt to put what we were witnessing into any other category: “This is terrorism,” I said to her. “I don’t know who, but we will find them, and whether or not we like it, we are now at war.” No one was calm now. We agreed that we had a lot of praying to do for those who were victims, and for our country, and hung up.
I don’t think I slept for days. I was glued to the TV, unbelieving as I saw the towers fall, just unable to accept it at first. And I was mad as hell. I wanted to fight. Not to go work on airplanes as before retiring from the Air Force: to FIGHT! And I still do.
This is our country, and it’s no one else’s business how we choose to live, or to worship – or not. Since 9/11 I’ve been reading on islam, and it is nothing more than the spawn of hell, a religion of the devil. It nearly wiped out civilization in the 12th-13th centuries, and if we don’t wipe it out it will eventually succeed in bringing us down.
NEVER AGAIN!
A proud Veteran:
“In other words, some of us are wolves, and some are sheepdogs. The wolves prey on us, and the sheepdogs protect us, but their constant vigilance and their willingness to do violence on our behalf.”
Strange that you should use the wolves and sheepdog analogy. Check this:
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/08-19-04/discussion.cgi.29.html
And then check my profile on my website.
So I relate exactly to what you are saying.