I was not planning on doing a 9/11 post today because today is my fabulous hubby's birthday and I hate the fact that he feels guilty for trying to celebrate the date of his birth on the day that makes a nation mourn. However, i read Barb's post over at Fancy Simple about where she was and it the fact that it brought back such vivid memories for me proves that 9/11 still needs posts.
Chad and I had a slightly different take on 9/11 because we were staring at the Pentagon footage, not the twin towers. We were getting ready for school and work and in the days before Olivia CNN was always on in every room of the house when we got ready in the morning. What can I say, we are info junkies. So, I'm in the bathroom and i hear him shout, "Holy shit! Come look at this!" I run out, half dressed and say, "Wow, air traffic control gone wrong." Then I went back to my routine and I heard Chad say as I walked away, "I don't know, hon. . ."
Sure enough, as i am pulling up to the law school the next plane hit the Pentagon. That's when sheer panic set in. We had just moved from DC, we still had a lot of friends there, friends that lived in Virginia, friends that worked right next to the White House, which is where we anticipated the next news to come from. We agreed to leave Chad's phone on, even in class and I would check in at work and then immediately call him to let him know what was going on. That's when i hit the phones. one by one, to make sure they were all okay. Some I couldn't get, so i was shaking when I got to work.
My co-workers were all glued to CNN.com when i got there and my boss informed me that they were saying Chicago was the next likely target. In the days afterward, this was probably a little remembered fact for most people, but for me, it was when i was so afraid that I couldn't even cry. My whole family, everyone was there. I called my mom, who is a nurse, who starts her shift at 6 AM, and had no idea what was going on. Dad was not in the downtown office, but now she was scared too. That's when my boss closed the office and we were all rudderless, at work, but afraid to go home alone. Some went home, the rest came up to the law school with me where most classes had been cancelled and we sat in the student lounge and watched CNN for hours, along with most of the law school. Later, we moved to professors' offices, or anywhere else that you could just be with a few people to try and digest and talk it through. Those first few hours, I remember nothing but the quiet.
Then I went back to work. What else could i do? i had found everyone by that point, CNN and gotten to be a repetitive loop, so i went back to the office, alone. More than anything i remember about those days I remember feeling very vulnerable, not because i felt unsafe I was pretty sure Madison would not make any hit list, but because politics were suddenly unavoidable. Your feelings about the President, diplomacy, our culpability, third world politics were suddenly expected conversation. I found this unnerving for reasons I can't explain, i have never really kept my politics to myself. However, every get-together, casual conversation with co-workers was like someone was stealing something from me. It felt like standing on the beach when the wave comes in and steals the sand right from underneath your feet.
I guess that is why you still need posts about 9/11.
