On a more serious and auspicious note

[trinityvixen]

We all know what tomorrow is. I don't have plans to commemorate, commiserate or even cry. I rather wonder, if not for the fact we are being told to hang our heads in silence if half the people in this country would even remember what happened five years ago. I've had such a lovely weekend and I'm quite tired out from it--if not for a link I got from a friend's journal (the link to a story that discusses Pearl Harbor is here), I might easily have forgotten myself.

I haven't forgotten what happened, of course. As is the curse for many, I remember all too well the disorientation, the confusion, the horror, the disbelief, and the surges and fits of wanting to help and feeling helpless. On the sliding scale of geographical involvement with September 11th, I am one of millions who was all to close to the disaster. On the personal level, I am closer than some, but luckier than many; I knew and am related to people who worked in the towers, but none died. I do still get teary thinking of it, and God knows, propaganda issues aside, I still wouldn't touch that fucking piece of trash ABC "docu-drama" (a new buzzword for "lies told about real people"). I don't need it. Tomorrow, I will probably avoid every blog I tend to read and not refreshing a single news source online.

A friend of mine told me soon after the fact that she never felt the rendering, tearing awfulness of that day because she slept through the disaster. By the time she woke up, the planes were all down--all being the operative word; they'd ordered all flights grounded by then. It just did not happen for her in the same way as it happened to other people--for good or for ill--because she wasn't aware of it.

In a parallel universe, that could have been me. I woke to my clock radio's first of many snooze cyclings. I woke to the click of it going on to the radio, but nothing else. I hit the snooze. In that parallel universe, that is how I remained--unaware that radio silence was not dead air between commercials or a station blip. In this reality, my alarm clock went off again seven minutes later. I had had my clock on snooze for seven minutes since I'd figured out the snooze function in high school, which was some years after I'd gotten that clock as part of growing up by waking myself up when I moved on to middle school.

Seven minutes later, the radio hosts were swearing and whispering as if they were afraid of being caught by the FCC. I doubt they ever were. I heard the important buzzwords, which needed to nestle in my slow brain before I could process them. It sounded like a gag--a phone prank like many other a morning. World Trade Center. Smoke. One tower was gone before I would fall out of my top bunk and rush for my ROLM phone. I consider it a minor miracle I remembered my 10-digit passcode and my home phone number (it didn't matter that it hadn't changed ever in my lifetime, I could easily have forgotten).

My grandmother answered. She's my father's mother, and the toughest bird you've ever met. We used to butt heads all the time (a family jewel of a story involves me demanding to know whether it was she or my father who was ultimately in charge of me when we disagreed over her babysitting strictures), but I mellowed and we chilled. She knew why I was calling, and she didn't think I was stupid. "Your mom and dad are fine, sweetie." She didn't know that. "I'm sure as soon as they land, they'll call you. Drew and Devin are fine. Are you okay?"

She never said I was an idiot for not remembering what had happened only the two days before. She, along with my mother's father and his wife, had accompanied my parents into the city to see my new suite. My parents were headed out to an annual bankers' conference that they went to every year. The last time I'd been to Disney World was when the conference was in Orlando. They'd asked my grandmother up to New York to babysit my younger sisters. On Tuesday, they'd flown out, bound for Arizona. I broke down for the first time in relief. I managed a stilted apology to the teacher of the class I had at 10:30 that morning. His fiance worked downtown, and he wanted only to be off the phone, but he cheered me. He worked at the Interchurch Center, told me to have faith, even if I had no God to put it in, and let me go.

It was the last phonecall I got until 7-8pm that evening. Phones weren't working, and I had no cell at the time. If not for AIM, I wouldn't have heard about my friend from high school's mother feeling the vibrations as the planes went by her office window. I wouldn't have known my friend at NYU was relocated. I couldn't stay at the computer, though, so I left a message and implored those I loved, if they saw it, to let me know they were okay and to let them know I was.

From there, my story isn't much different from anyone else's that I know. I wrapped my former roommate in a hug and we cried in front of the TV, watching from the 18th floor window the smoking scene downtown and the hideous wrong-ness of one, then no towers left. We left the suite door ajar, welcomed any to watch the news with us. Someone, I think it was bigscary marched us down to St. Luke's to see about donating blood. The line was out the door. People in need were offered free food and places to stay if they were trapped and unable to get home when the bridges and MTA shut down. I loved my city. I saw smoke in the sky even from 116th street. I hated the world.

My parents called me from Dallas just as I was reaching the strung-out-from-crying tiredness of a day's spent weary. I burst into tears and then giggles as my mother told me about how my father was pissed that they'd been rerouted to Dallas (no one onboard had been told of what happened for security reasons--only crew knew), and that he'd gone marching around the terminal to figure out what was wrong before finding the news show. They went to stay with my uncle who lives in San Antonio and ended up driving back home in a rental. My siblings and I all touched base, my brother and I discovering that we'd each been dismissed from our classes for the day, and unheard of event for Columbia and medical school. I don't remember falling asleep, I only remember being tired after that.

And what else is there in the after? A book of short stories I read, Twilight of the Superheroes talks of people in transition, waiting for that Tuesday to go on where the world didn't end. I'm not mired in that, thank God. I knew terrorism was a fact of life when I found my father--never previously seen home before eight in the evening--walking towards me and my mother coming home from elementary school in 1993. He had blackened tissues--the kind that were balled and crumpled because they were really napkins he just shoved in his pockets--from wiping his nose as he walked down forty flights in smokey darkness. I, unlike most, knew there was danger. I got lucky both times, so I admit to there being some simple denial at work, but I am not mired in the need to rehash the thing. Does it disturb me? I think hslayer and viridian remember our trip to Fahrenheit 9/11 well enough to support me in saying yes.

Do I denigrate other ways of remembering or recognizing? No. Do I wish to do, as I have for four years previous, to think on the day, lament it, and wish not to let it cast a pall over my entire day? Absolutely. Remember, recognize, but do not rue.

What about the rest of you? Who wants to tell their story? Who will formally pour a 40 for 9/11 tomorrow? Sound off, I want to know how you, my friends all, will treat, ignore, or otherwise tread tenderly around tomorrrow.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

First of all, I just want to say: You love Tim Cross. I totally forgot about that guy, and that day I don't think I even thought about telling him I wasn't going to CC, there was no question. Remember a few weeks later in class when we were doing the Koran and he said he was getting funny looks for reading it in the subway? Anyway...

I find that it's harder to deal with the anniversary now that I'm not living in NY. I read an article the other day saying that after Sept. 11 (I've always hated all the terms that were created afterwards--"9/11," "Ground Zero") people struggled with ownership, like who actually was entitled to grieve most. So up here I do struggle with that very issue, on the non-5 year anniversaries (3rd and 4th) there was little to no coverage on TV in the morning, business as usual, whereas I knew if I was at home it would be on every channel, and you would feel it in the air. On the one hand it makes me so mad, I feel like no non-New Yorker knows what it was like to be in Manhattan that day, no one knows what it's like to have their home attacked, that everyone else's "never forgets" are empty, but then I also feel guilty, because do I really "own" the tragedy? No one I knew personally was hurt or killed that day. I know of people in my neighborhood who were, sure, but other than sadness due to the enormous destruction and loss of life it affected me because it's an area where I spent so much time during high school, because I have so many family/friends that live downtown. And I'm sure every American felt bad that day, so is it fair of me to hold it against them that they weren't in New York City that day, or from the city? No.
Another thing that bothers me on this landmark anniversary is how much fucking up has gone on since 2001. That day the whole world was like "we love you America," do you remember? The US has squandered so much (all?) international goodwill since then. And "Ground Zero" remains what the great philosopher Lloyd once referred to as a "gaping hole of death" because all the competing interests can't get their shit together.
Not to be melodramatic, but I honestly think of my life in terms of before and after that day, and I hate whenever the anniversary rolls around because it forces me to remember exactly where I was and how I felt that day and the peace of mind that was lost from 9/10/01. Although I will not and cannot help but "never forget," if only because I read the Daily News online every day and I seriously think a day hasn't gone by in the last 5 years where it has been written about. Is that only because it's a New York newspaper? I don't know. But I think about it everyday, and I'm not even desensitized by this point, the barrage of articles and pictures I've seen leading up to this anniversary are as upsetting as ever. Yet life goes on, I didn't think I was going to live until my next birthday and here we are 5 years later.
Anyway, I just wanted to say my piece. To answer your initial question, I am not participating in any ceremony or 40-pouring (drinking, maybe), I will watch some of the ceremony if it's on TV up here like I try to do every year because I want to see home if I can't be there, and yes, it will cast a pall over my entire day. Too many reminders of sadness and death and fear. Looking forward to the 12th.

--Liz M.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's wrong to separate now versus then when it comes to that day. It's funny how I do it and not realize--I often think of it in terms of babies. There are babies and toddlers who will never know a world before September 11th. Some were too young, others not even born (like my neice). I see pregnant women and women with young children everyday at the hospital, and about every other time, that's really what I think--"My God, that child will never know life that isn't post-9/11/2001." So, I try not to dwell, but I'd be lying to myself if I said it's not hovering at the edge of my thoughts--even ones that aren't fatalistic in the slightest.

The loss of goodwill disgusts me. The fact that we've managed to kill just as many soldiers as people who died in the terrorist attacks for the wrong reason and using the victims of terror as an excuse sickens me. On Friday, I was talking with BSD and crowd about a fictional account of a guy who goes off into space and how he thinks about what would happen if he got back to Earth and everyone was dead (because it was very possible he'd been shot forward in time as well as space). It didn't matter if it were twenty years or two hundred, the fact was that life very well could have been irradicated before he got back if he'd left today. The idea that in twenty years we might instigate something truly world-ending is not as farfetched as it sounds, even as I tend to dismiss it as a new version of cold-war paranoia. Because we--and by 'we' I mean our government--cocked up our attempt at justice and turned it into aimless revenge, we might just have set ourselves up for defeat again. Stupid stupid stupid.

That's what I think of with September 11th: I think of violence and how stupid and pointless it is, how little it solves, how much it destroys, and how hopeless it is to convince some people to abandon it. I temper that self-righteousness by humbling myself with my very clear memory of wishing a great deal of harm on those who orchestrated the attacks--I gladly would have hurt them myself if I'd had opportunity. It both makes me sad that I'm just as susceptible but also glad that I recognize that I don't have to succumb to the kind of blind hatred that was behind this from the get go.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the ones who slept through the immediate horror. Not very late, but late enough that people were running around scrambling all over the place by the time I was awake, and classes were already cancelled. I only found out by piecing together the weird IMs I'd gotten from people.

I never quite reacted to it. I remember my overwhelming thought was "I want things to be normal again." I've cried over it once, when I saw a picture of the commemorative lights they used to have up, the ones that looked like the towers were still there and made of light. That got to me. I think I teared up slightly at Fahrenheit 9/11... but the messed up truth is that I really never felt anything about it. I lived here, sure, but you know, I'd never actually even been BY the WTC before that. I've only been to that area once now.

It was too big a tragedy for me to register that it happened so close. I think that's it. I didn't know anyone who was hurt or killed. All I've ever wanted was for things to just be normal, for us not to live in a world where this shit can happen.

And yeah, if I hadn't caught this on my f-list? I probably would have forgotten the date.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's funny but I feel the same way towards Katrina. I was on vacation at the time in Hawai'i, and when you're there, there is no news. They put the girl scouts on the front page for having a parade and, oh, yeah, there was a hurricane in Louisiana. I saw some of the post-Katrina problems starting up on airport TVs showing CNN, but I always drown those out so it never really hit me.

I called my mother and she was outraged, she was near to tears and talking about donating money and such and I was completely baffled. What on earth was going on that she thought she had to do that? We had those four hurricanes in Florida and she didn't spazz. Took me a few weeks to get up to speed, and I'm still as-a-human horrified by it all, but it's too removed from me to get more anger built up.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

My roomate Lars and I, coming back from a party tonight, decided to get out at Whitehall Street when our R train stopped and take a walk around the site at around midnight. There were people gathered around, a group of them hanging up large memorial banners to those members of the NYPD and FDNY lost 5 years ago. We walked, we talked for a bit about our experiences in the area and with the days surrounding 9/11. Having grown up in the city, both of us had our own personal memories.

For me, 9/11 is an incredibly mixed memory. I used to hang out by the towers and in the first level mall during high school (Stuyvesant being a few blocks away), so the towers were very real things for me. They were a part of the natural landscape, "like mountains" as Lars put it, something I passed by every day, a place where they sold junk food and novelty items. So my initial reaction to their fall was confusion, along the lines of "how do you knock down mountains?" It took a while for this surreal sense to give way to horror. The ultimate result is that downtown is no longer the same place as it was when I was younger; it's a new neighborhood which somehow has all of the same buildings but isn't the same place. I've gone back down there, but never found my youth... those memories have been replaced with the permanent darkness of the area, the pall that never goes away down there. My past doesn't exist there anymore.

9/11 was also the start of my relationship with Lizza. We were drawn together by the event, and the relationship which followed was the best experience of my life and brought me out of the crippling depression I'd been living with for years before. It makes it hard to truly feel awful about it. The day represents new life, a schism from my past and a bridge to the future... a big, confusing, surreal event which I doubt I'll ever really understand.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I like your memories of that space--they are so different from mine. For you it was a real place, a real space to be live and hang out in. For me, it's sort of like Disney Land. It's where, when I was very small, I got to go and play on weekends. That's where Daddy worked, and I could play on typewriters while he did, and raid the supply closet, and run around and get lost in all the empty offices. I remember the plaza and being impressed at the food on carts--food out in the open! (Such a suburban girl) I remember going to eat at this one particular Burger King for dinner, and that was a treat (when we did car trips, we mostly made our own foodstuffs, so fast food was like a bonus treat).

I never really went there just as part of being in the city, as a matter of course like you. It's weird to think of something that would have been like that for me--say the elementary school near my house--suddenly being gone. Bizarre.

But I'm glad something good happened at the same time as all that. You've got to temper good with bad, and I'm glad someone has, especially someone who needed it.

[(Anonymous)]

It's strange, but I only went into the upper floors of the WTC a couple of times in my life. I never had reason to, kind of the same way that I've never been to the Statue of Liberty. The big famous places in the city don't have any kind of magical significance for me, they're just places.

I also know exactly the Burger King you're talking about, I think it's been there forever :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It really has. I think there was also a McDonalds with player piano, but I could be getting mixed up.

The last time I was in the World Trade Center was when we took a Japanese exchange student to the top. I remember my mother being a better tour guide than any on the roof that day. Several tourists were casually listening to her explain about where Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope between the buildings and signed his name. It was very cute, and very my mother.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

When I was in Liverpool I only first found out about the London bombings when my mum rang me from Australia. It was so weird I couldn't understand what she was talking about at first, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the TV news....

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I know--you were the first person I thought of, too. My sense of geography being what it is, I'm sure I was worried for no reason at all, but it didn't stop me from doing it. Made me understand why all my relatives were freaking out about getting in touch with me (which, at the time, didn't make any sense as I only lived in the city, but nowhere near the WTC).

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

I was already graduated, and telecommuting for my CU job at the time. I wasn't setting an alarm then, so I, too, woke up to everything already happening. I wouldn't even have known then except that my usual routine was to click on the bedroom tv to Good Morning America and wake up slowly. It wasn't so slow that morning.

I don't actually have much of a story about that day. I pretty much spent the whole day camped out in front of the tv. You talk about seeing smoke all the way from 116th, but I could see it from my back deck all the way up in Crestwood by evening. From there it just looked like a cloud, but it tapered very eerily to a point on the southern horizon.

I also remember going out the next day, just to get the hell out of the house. No one was anywhere, even up in Yonkers. I was really shaken even though I wasn't down there and no one I knew was, either, and I actually went to church for the first time in years - not to a service, just when it was open. I remember it didn't do much for me, and I walked (the weather was nice) up to Nathan's and played some pinball in the game room. It was empty there, too, except for one old guy working. I actually found that more soothing as a way to just forget it.

I was definitely lucky to be be someone who could just choose to forget it, not having lost anyone close to me. Still, like every New Yorker, I felt it pretty strongly, and still do. But I've also always felt that if their goal was to disrupt our way of life then the best thing we can do is to keep doing what we've always done, or even do it better. Be more like ourselves than ever before, so to speak. New York gets a bad rap sometimes, but New Yorkers are actually pretty helpful people a lot of the time, and of course that was taken to the Nth degree on and immediately after the attack, which is exactly what I'm talking about. I said I can choose to forget it, but of course that's an oversimplifaction for pushing it to the back of my mind. It's always with all of us, even if some of us don't do anything overt about it any more.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with your philosophy. It informs on my thoughts more than I'd like, but I don't dwell if I can help it. I try to make my thoughts on September 11th more constructive and less fatalistic when I have them.

It's eerie to think of you being able to see the dust and smoke from Westchester. I mean, so many miles away? One of the strangest things to me ever was a promotional image for the movie World Trade Center that showed an aerial view of how the smoke cloud moved. It looked so wrong to me and I only just realized that it looks wrong because no one was in the air to take that shot. I mean, I'm sure there were military helicopters and such, but I sure wasn't, no one I knew was. That cloud was something that moved over our heads, not under it, and it's so bizarre to think of someone not being covered to see it for what it was: a pyre. So very odd.

Because you asked...

[teneda.livejournal.com]

And I am too tired to retype anything:

My first 2 posts after the whole thing:
http://teneda.livejournal.com/2001/09/12/
http://teneda.livejournal.com/2001/09/20/

The one post that still haunts me:
http://teneda.livejournal.com/9780.html

Re: Because you asked...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's terrible to see the rage and the pain in that day, as it's so much sharper than just about anything else in life. Thank you for sharing.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

The in a nutshell version:

Woke up, flipped on GMA and saw what was going on with tower 1. Turned off GMA just after (by about 3 sec) the second tower got hit and went into work. Got two-thirds of the way to the office before the subway was shut down, so I walked the rest of the way. Got into the office about 5 min before tower 1 dropped and saw my co-workers glued to the windows (we were on the south side of our building on the 14th floor, giving us one of the clearest views down to that area). Spend the next 5 hours coordinating things between mom and dad as to locate my sister (a Stuy student at time). After locating her started heading home.

As usual, I was where I needed to be. For any more details than that, you'll have to ask in person. Just how I am as all.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's fine with me. It's kind of Pandora's box being opened, and I understand people not wanting to rip that out over an impersonal medium.

It does give me perspective, reading journals from folk who are closer and farther from the events, physically and emotionally. And I won't pry for any more than that. I probably won't ask you in person, and don't be offended if I do not, only because it isn't a subject I enjoy bringing up at most gatherings where our crowd mingles.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

It's a little different for me, because while I'm kind of a New Yorker now, I wasn't at the time.

For me, 9/11 was the third day at college. I was supposed to pick my classes that day. My roommate and I were sleepily hanging out when we heard the news on my RA's TV through the paper thin walls of the dorm. I thought it was a movie. It wasn't until I heard the actual people on the hall freaking out that I realized it was real. I made it over in time to hear that the second tower had just been hit.

The rest of the morning was a weird mix of panic and numbness. My roommate's parents went through WTC during their morning commute - it took two hours to get through to them. I wasn't sure whether my dad was at the Pentagon that morning. I spent a big chunk of the day calling over and over, trying to get through to his secretary. I went and chose classes, not knowing where he was. Princeton has a very big New Yorker contingent - there were a lot of people who were having trouble finding out whether their families were ok or not. It was such a beautiful day, everyone had their windows open. But no one was outside. Everyone I saw who wasn't actively doing something else was watching the TV, and every TV on campus was turned on to the news. I remember feeling how ridiculous it was to be dithering over which math class to take.

I finally did get through to my dad - just in time. Because he was in New Jersey that day, but he was leaving in two minutes to head to New York. My father's a retired Naval officer. And at the time, he was the naval liason to FEMA for New York. So I managed to find out that he was safe - but heading straight into the danger zone.

Now? It's weird. I've seen my dad's pictures of him standing knee deep in ash. I've got friends who lost parents, and am about to acquire in-laws whose offices were there. But I wasn't. I'm surrounded by people who were here when it happened, but I was tucked safely away on a leafy Gothic campus at the time. We had our own freak-outs - the anthrax thing was our post office. But there's that odd sense of having been endangered without actually having been in danger, and having lost something without having a loss to point to.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's a loss with a poignant sadness that is often overlooked, actually. Because you cannot compete with folk who lost loved ones or were traumatized or financially up creeks, you probably don't get to share much. There's no need to compete--everyone has some relevant experience related to September 11th, and all are valid reasons to offer sympathy and praise courage.

As for the collateral damage you guys got after the fact with the anthrax scare? That shouldn't have happened. But such is the unfortunate (and true) legacy of September 11th that the pain inflicted was rebounded and continues to volley between us v them instead of finding some solution to erradicate the way of thinking and network of support for wanton murderers and hatemongers. If anything makes me cry today, it's thinking on that.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

As for the collateral damage you guys got after the fact with the anthrax scare?

That one was weird, really weird. We didn't get mail for a month. I especially felt bad for all the kids whose SAT scores were contaminated and sitting there for weeks and weeks and not allowed to be sent out. It's a tiny, trite little thing - but they add up after awhile. I got evacuated from the student center once because someone had spilled powdered sugar on a keyboard.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I remember worrying about that--me being a clutz, I was sure I'd spill something and get reported as a terrorist. Sure enough, I spilled my detergent in the elevator and frantically tried to sweep it up on the ride down to the basement where the laundry machines were. Nothing got shut down, thank Bob. Things like that really do get on your nerves after a while.

And, of course, soon as you let your guard down (or are wearied out by all the crying wolf), that's when something actually happens.

sad memories

[arcfox7.livejournal.com]

Reading over this Dayle, and I apologize for not seeing it yesterday made me think about that day all over again. Also the day they tried to bomb back in 1993. It hurts alot, but I think that it's important to remember that pain, so I never forget it.

I'll start with 1993- started off like a usual day as a junior in high school. This class that class. I then joined a teacher in his office in the new wing of the school, to talk about starting a men's volleyball team. I stepped into his office and the rest of the day became a blur hearing about the bombing on the radio. Sure that my father was dead, and that I couldn't deal with that so well. The teacher pretty much had me sit in his office until I calmed down, which was well into my next class. I went to my guidance counselor's office and think I got sent home. I don't really remember. it hurt so much until I found out he was okay.

Then began 9/11. I woke up that morning, a nice day in Philly, and walked to class thinking about Dr. Schmidt's lecture on the anatomy of the human arm. The first class went about half way through before someone interrupted saying a plane had hit the Trade Center, but it was near the roof, don't know if it was an accident or not. It was a double lecture so no break but for bathroom. Another 20 minutes went bye, and the same person came back, spoke with Dr. Schmidt for a minute or two, and a terrible look came accross his face. Basically, at that point I realized something was really really wrong. Dr. Schmidt then got to the mike, and we all fell silent. He said "Another plane has hit the other tower, and the first one has fallen. Anyone that needs to leave, feel free, you will have nothing held against....." and yea I was out of my seat and out of the auditorium by then. I ran home and turned on the TV. At least sis you knew a little bit that Dad wasn't there. I had no idea. I watched the planes crashing into the building over and over, and my heart broke. I cryed for hours desperately trying to talk to anybody, but cells were all blocked. I couldn't talk to anyone but those around me. Who all felt bad and tried to help, but seeing that your father is dead for the second time in your life for working in the same building. Too hard. but as you said sis, we were lucky. I finally did get Grandma and she told me they were on a plane, but was sure it wasn't one of those planes. My tears turned to tears of joy. I remember that Aaron finally got through to me, upset himself, saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't go to your house. I couldn't face your mom. I couldn't see her cry. It would kill me. I'm so sorry." He was relieved to hear that they were ok, and that not on one of those planes.

Twice my father has managed to avoid the death toll. I wish I could say like my sister that every one I knew got out. Thankfully most did, in some fantastic unbelievable ways. My friend Eric who had an interview that morning at Cantor-Fitzgerald on the 93rd floor. he was early, but decided to go get a pretzel before his interview instead of going up early. Yeah, he walked into a church on his way back. But I did lose a classmate from high school. There for an interview with his companies NY office, a promotion to help support his family. Just interviewing. Another friend's father died as one of the volunteer fireman's who ran in to help. Yeah he was a congressman too. I only got a glimpse of the aftermath a week or two later. It still hurts.

My father was on a trip to Colorado from what I remember, and had left a day early so he could golf before he had to do business or whatever. And when I heard my mom's voice on the phone saying "I'll never ever complain about him golfing ever again." from Dallas, which thank goodness they were sent to Dallas instead of somewhere else away from a relative. especially the relative that worked for as CEO for a rental car company. All rentals were gone by the time they landed. He gave them a car they were planning on selling off to drive back to NY.

anyhow, that's a little bit of my memories. Sad. hurts alot. But I'm glad you did post Sis. For me to be able to help put some of that hurt out of my life.

Re: sad memories

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's great that you get some details different. I was sure it was the CBANYs thing, but you know what? That day I'm sure I never asked anything more deeply than "Are you not going to work?" And since then...really, I wish I'd had a blog back then so I could compare what I remember. My memory is shoddy as hell, and I can already feel the bits and pieces sliding away. Once the initial bombardment of contrary emotions and falling apart was over, it was just a day of protracted misery and confusion. I do remember bigscary toasting to New York's Bravest, and man, at that point, we didn't even know how badly they'd been wiped out by the attacks. I remember seeing the same anchorwoman on TV all day, Giuliani walking down the middle of the street all tough (and, even though he's made himself ridiculous and raped all the good he did that day for some publicity, I will always be grateful for how with it he was that day). It still makes me tear up, but I don't cry outright any more unless I need to. Things like writing this really help, and I'm glad you shared, too.

I guess I understand my friend who slept through September 11th a little better reading about 1993 and your recollection. Dad coming up Rodney towards Edgewood was the first that either I or Mom knew about the bombing. She'd been out all day on errands, and they didn't break into our routine at school (I think it was late enough in the day they probably decided it was better to keep us to a normal schedule). We were extremely lucky.

Reading over some of these stories from folk, I realize how lucky. I really do not know anyone killed in New York, Pennsylvania, or Washington DC. I have no ancilliary acquaintances to mourn specifically, just the memory of that day and the scant minutes I forgot about how lucky I was before I got Grandma on the phone. That was plenty. Those who've shared deeper losses, I don't know how they made it, but I'm definitely impressed.