My 9/11 Experience

I was off from work on Tuesday, September the 11th, 2001.  John was either off from work or went into work later; I know for sure he was there at home that morning.  At the time we lived in our house on Hawthorne.  As has been my habit for most of my life, I got up early that day.  To me, sleeping late meant sleeping until 8 or so.  I must have slept a little later than that on that day though, because when I got out of bed and turned on the TV in the living room, I saw what I thought was the movie “Die Hard”.  My very first thought was “why are they playing Die Hard on a Tuesday morning?”  It took me a few minutes to realize that what I was seeing was the wholesale murder of thousands of innocent people.
            I woke up after the first tower had been hit but before the 2nd tower had been hit.  I was in total disbelief watching the news.  I figured at that point that a small plane must have hit, though the huge hole in the tower was evidence of something much larger than a Cessna.  As I was watching the news and trying to figure it all out, I see a black something in the sky coming towards the burning building.  As it got closer it seemed to speed up and right before it hit I realized it was a commercial jumbo jet.  When it hit the tower, I felt like I too had been hit.  I knew immediately that we were under attack.
            I ran to the bedroom to wake up John.  I had never been so frightened in all my life, since or before then.  John grudgingly woke up and followed me back to the living room.  I started the process of trying to locate my mother.  My first thought was that she was at work and she would not know what was going on.  She had just started a job at Marriott Business Services the previous day.  Marriott was only about half a mile from the Knoxville airport.   I needed to hear her voice to make sure she was OK and to let her know that we might be in danger.  I was finally able to reach her and she was fine; her work was letting them all go home for the day.  Everything was so chaotic those first few hours.  Uncertainty, like a heavy fog, loomed everywhere in the air.
            I became more and more anxious and worried and scared as I watched the news coverage.  I remember feeling pride though after seeing President Bush address the nation those first couple of times.  At the moment of the attack, every one of us stopped being Democrats and Republicans and instead became Americans.  At that moment of horror, I felt a kinship with every person I came across those next few days and weeks.  On that Tuesday I decided to go into work.  I had already called work to tell them what had happened, but I needed to get out of the house in order to break my spiral of fear.
            When I got to work, Heather immediately put me to work changing mannequins.  She could sense that I needed to be doing something, anything to get my mind off of the attack.  I did fine for an hour or two, but on the flipside of the coin I began to feel even more worried by not knowing what was happening in the world.  Early that afternoon our corporate office went ahead and closed all of our stores, so that we may go home and be close to our families.  I am sure that nobody in the country could even remotely focus on work on that day.  Even I, who wanted to go to work to separate myself from the anxiety, eventually and ultimately wanted to go back home.  We also found out that all of the airplanes in the country would be grounded indefinitely, so we did not know if or when we would be getting our paycheck, which normally came via FedEx on Thursdays.  Heather, Chris (the 2nd assistant manager), and I decided to get money out of our petty cash in order to get gas and groceries.  Bear in mind, we did not know at the time that this attack was limited to only the four hijacked planes.  Nobody knew if there would be a 2nd, 3rd, or however many waves of attack yet to come.  We placed IOUs into the safe so that we can pay back the funds once our checks did eventually arrive.  Ironically, and sadly, the company that handled our direct deposits was in one of the Trade Center buildings, so we couldn’t even depend on getting our paychecks that way.
            On the way back home I noticed all of the gas stations had lines going down the street.  The uncertainty of everything meant nobody knew when gas stations would be refilled, so everyone decided to fill up their tanks just to be safe.  Nobody knew if perhaps gas trucks would be a target or potential weapon of terrorists.  Many wild theories and rumors flew around that day.  Thankfully it turned out that President Bush was able to maintain order on the nation and nothing else other than airlines had been disrupted for any length of time.
            I did not know a single person who died on 9/11.  I did not know anyone who knew anyone that died on 9/11.  But my heart and soul felt exactly as if I lost several loved ones that day.  The attacks felt personal to me.  I felt so angry, so very angry, at the attackers.  I felt such intense sorrow, knowing there were thousands upon thousands of families out there grieving over the loss of their loved ones.  It was as if my emotions were subscribing to the Truman Doctrine that an attack on one is an attack on all of us.
            People jumped from the burning buildings, and that was something so horrific that I still cannot wrap myself around having to make such a choice – stay and burn to death or jump to your death.  I can’t imagine their thoughts at that very moment, faced with inevitable death.  Jumping from those burning buildings meant dying alone, no goodbyes to the ones you love, no hope, just fear and sadness.   This horror was juxtapositioned with the heroism of the first responders who were so selfless and brave, not just in the initial response, but even after the first tower fell they ran back into Hell to try to save more people.  They surely had to know the 2nd tower could fall as well.  They surely had to know there was no hope in putting out the fires yet they continued to try to help.
            There was so much good and evil that came in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.  For a too brief moment in time the country came together in a solidarity that I had never seen in my lifetime.  I couldn’t even equate such patriotic unity except to maybe compare it to the national war effort during World War 2.  On that day mostly all racial and socioeconomic statuses were erased.  When you saw someone in the street, it was very easy to meet the eyes of everyone you came across, whether it was a policeman, a store clerk, or just a stranger on the street.  On that day there was no road rage, there was no impatience at the person ahead of you in line.
On that day when you looked into the eyes of your fellow Americans you saw strength, determination, sadness, and resolve.  I wondered then how long this feeling would last amongst our countryman.  I wondered if it would last forever; I hoped for that to be so, though I doubted it.  When I began to hear the awful stories of American Muslims, or even people who looked like Muslims being attacked and even killed, I felt so sick to my stomach.  By even giving into our anger and allowing it to instead turn into hatred,  attacking and killing the countries Muslims made us no better than the terrorists.  It angered me that those Americans who were attacking Muslims couldn’t understand this fundamental concept of humanity.   I felt a secondary sadness in realizing that as horrific as this tragedy was, in a few months or years we would all be cut off from one another again.  In a few weeks or years I knew we would again become Republicans and Democrats, straights and gays, black and white.
  I have never been so unhappy to be proven correct.   9/11 has now been demoted to a date on a calendar alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Memorial Day.  Now instead of remembering and grieving the focus is on moving on.  I strongly feel like some tragedies are so great that moving on would be a slap in the face to all of those who died in the attacks, and all of those who have died or been injured in fighting for our freedoms.  On 9/11 freedom and liberty stopped becoming ideals on a faded piece of parchment and instead became, once again, the fundamental core of our national genetics.
I, like so many Americans that day, was no sure how to deal with and take in the attacks.  I found myself being glued to the TV; I did not go to sleep that night.  I couldn’t sleep knowing there were people still in the rubble.  I couldn’t sleep until I knew they were able to save someone from the towers.   Unfortunately, only one or two people were ever saved.  Everyone else dies instantly when the towers came down.  When Christmas drew closer, I called my Mom and begged her not to get me any presents for Christmas.  I pleaded with her to please donate to the Red Cross or other such charity.  I simply could not fathom getting presents and THINGS when so many, many Americans didn’t even have family or friends anymore.  Of course my mom ignored my request, but I am sure it was because the act of giving was cathartic for her.
Almost a year later I was together with my family, having come up for the weekend to see Ken and Barbara and baby Liam.  We had all just spent the day at Dollywood together.  Mostly we spent time in the kid’s section watching Liam have a blast maneuvering through all the different sections, especially the room full of balls.  As we left Dollywood, we turned on the radio and I remember the horror of hearing that we had invaded Iraq.  Flashbacks of 9/11 came to me and I immediately felt overwhelming fear that there would be another attack against our country in retaliation.  Of course no such attack came, and the war turned out to be a huge mess on the level of Vietnam. In retrospect it was found out that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 but our stupid president was too much of a cowboy to admit he was wrong, so the war lasted 8 years, killing more Americans than had died on 9/11.