History is personal. All of us place ourselves, our stories, at the center. No matter how small, how obliquely relative. This is my story.
I didn't listen to the news on the way to work that morning. I was well into the work morning when the calls came. Because of the nature of my work, I ignored the first call, but answered the second. It was my sister, asking if I was watching television. Of course I wasn't, I was working. She told me to turn on the television, that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I couldn't understand what she was telling me.
It had been exactly one month and a day to the day that my mother had had an aneurysm and subsequent stroke, coincidentally on my wedding day, and I had been functioning under a thick sheet of ice ever since, so my sister's phone call, the hour of her call, the tone of her voice, didn't set off an alarm. I remember after hanging up I went immediately to my computer to MSNBC, which was down due to overload, then a handful of news sites, which were also inundated, so I went to a colleague's office, packed with other coworkers, and we watched the unimaginable.
I didn't feel like it was a movie or a dream or unreality. It didn't feel like anything I could place in any context at all. It didn't occur to me that anyone I knew, intimately or generally could be involved in any of this. Of course I was wrong. Their stories are theirs to tell.
The first call I placed was to the only person in my family that could possibly be in the towers or the city. My brother. So I called him. He was in California. The second call was to my sister who was at the hospital with our mother to tell her to tell the nurses not to say anything, to keep the television off. My daughter was in Phoenix staying with her best friend at her uncle's home. He called and left a message that the girls were okay and that my daughter was making crayon drawings. The three drawings she made during this time are among my favorite, especially the large-headed girl with a crow flying in the distance flanked by a large plane. The mother of my daughter's friend drove to Phoenix and brought the girls home.
I don't know if I checked the Onion News Network site that day, or during the days following the attacks, but I know reading their articles, I smiled. And laughed. The interview with Muhammed Atta in Hell was especially stress-relieving. And inexplicably an image of America with a giant red bullseye covering the entirety with the caption, Holy F...ing Shit! Humor is a curious and revealing thing in terrible times.
For many years I met with a writing group at the Sugar House Barnes and Noble. I called the group to see if we were still meeting and everyone decided to go ahead. When we all arrived, the bookstore was closed, so we headed to a local sports bar. Of course we didn't talk about our writing. We hugged and held onto each other's hands. Instead of sporting events, the burning towers and the people jumping from them was on the large screens. I couldn't watch. One particular woman from our group, a petite blond with light blue eyes, watched with a type of fascination, squinting her eyes. I remember thinking what an icy bitch. I still can't watch the people falling.
Later that night, sitting on the couch watching television with my sister at my parent's home, my father sleeping upstairs, a plane flew low over the house, enough to shake the living room chandelier. We raced outside to watch it. Hill Air Force Base is to the north of my bedroom town, and what I learned later was that the plane was flying reconnaissance to California and back.
For the next few months, my fear was that the local base would be a target. I couldn't stop myself from thinking of something my father told me of a childhood waking dream. He's a tangible man, he must touch something to believe it, so after all these years he is still trying to make sense of what he and his brother saw. He and his brother were on top of the chicken coop when they saw a bright light break and catch fire to the north. He said they saw fences and metal posts melt like wax, trees burst like struck matches. And then they saw the scorched remains. Both swear they saw this, although at the time the base was nothing more than farmland.
I've spent the weekend watchting the memorials, from Paul McCartney's tribute to Time Magazine's. I am filled with hope for a better world.
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