Friday – What Was I Doing that Day?
Sep. 11th, 2009 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
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I've heard complaints that it's trite that everyone stops and tells their story about where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I've heard someone say that unless you were in New York City on that day or one of the other places that got hit, then your story doesn't matter. That view fails to take into account that it was a shared experience for millions of people, all at once. While those of us who were far from Ground Zero that day did not experience the terror, we collectively felt like we had been punched in the stomach. We stopped what we were doing, and as a nation tried to comprehend what was happening. The stories of the victims and their families are by far the moist poignant, but there is a collective poignancy to all the tales of, "It was an ordinary day...until the moment it wasn't."
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
A lot of people died while I ate my oatmeal that morning, but I didn't know it while I was reading Dear Abby and drinking a diet Coke. I was unemployed, but I had an interview lined up for the next morning and I felt hopeful about it. Jeff was asleep, having come home from the night shift at the airport. He hadn't stayed up to get things done like he sometimes did, but had crawled into bed to lie next to me while I slept late the way unemployed people often do. He had just had an interview within his company the week before, to work in maintenance scheduling. They told him he pretty much had the job as soon as the paperwork was done, and we were looking forward to him having a normal, 8 to 5, Monday through Friday work schedule for once.
Of course, we didn’t know that the aviation industry was about to be turned on its head; that in the upcoming months thousands of people would lose their jobs when the public would suddenly turned too fearful to fly. They never called Jeff back about the position.
When I woke up that September morning, things were looking up, in general. Life was good, and getting better.
One thing about my personal habits is that I never turn on the TV set in the morning, because I know if I do I will spend my whole morning watching junk and not getting anything done. For some reason, that day I did after breakfast, thinking maybe I'd catch a trashy talk show. Instead, al programs had been interrupted for a breaking story in New York: a passenger jet had crashed into the World Trade Center.
At first, everyone assumed it must be an accident. I went upstairs to wake up my husband. When you work in aviation, all plane crashes are personal, and he would want to know. I always call him and let him know about plane crashes.
"Did they say how many souls?" he usually asks. By souls he means living human beings that were lost. Aviation people differentiate between souls and bodies that might be in coffins in the cargo hold. Jeff's job as maintenance inspector is to keep planes from crashing and the people in them from dying. When a plane goes down, he and the people he works with gather round to listen, read about, and discuss what went wrong. Their interest isn't casual curiosity: the crews of these planes are part of their extended tribe and the passengers are wards in their care.
I shook him awake and told him what happened. He looked at me blankly with sleepy eyes and made me repeat myself, then leapt out of bed to see for himself. We watched on the TV as the second plane hit. Jeff's face was grim, I kept my hand over my mouth the way I do when I am shocked.
"This wasn't an accident," I said. I am one of those people who sometimes must voice the obvious in order to wrap my mind around it.
"Nope," Jeff said. I don't remember us saying much more.
After that we watched. We learned about the other two planes, in Washington D.C. and in Pennsylvania. We watched the people fall from the floors above the impact, having to choose between a painful death by fire and a long, terrifying but ultimately less painful drop. We watched the towers collapse. We watched the people fleeing ground zero, looking for all the world like granite statues brought to life because all of them, no matter what their race, where a uniform shade of gray from the rubble of the falling buildings. After awhile, Jeff went back to bed. He had to work that night, and expected it to be an intense and emotional ordeal. Eventually, I turned off the TV. I wrote on my calendar that day, "WWIII begins."
In hindsight, the war to come would have a lot more in common with Vietnam, but I didn't know that yet.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
For my parents' generation the question was always, "Where were you when you heard about the Kennedy assignation?" Their parents remembered what they were doing when they heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was my generation's moment when we all stopped as a group and turned to look in the same direction all at the same time. It changed the way we thought and lived.
It was humbling to stand there, the last of the superpowers thinking no one could harm us, only to be sucker-punched by a group of fanatics bearing fingernail files and utility knives. As a nation, we don't do humble very well - it's just not part of who we are.
We woke up that morning, and things were ordinary. We went to bed, and we didn't know what ordinary was any more, because the very definition of our ordinary day-by-day existence was in a state of change. Almost a decade later, we have to an extent gained a new sense of what's ordinary, but it's not the same one we had before.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
I've heard complaints that it's trite that everyone stops and tells their story about where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I've heard someone say that unless you were in New York City on that day or one of the other places that got hit, then your story doesn't matter. That view fails to take into account that it was a shared experience for millions of people, all at once. While those of us who were far from Ground Zero that day did not experience the terror, we collectively felt like we had been punched in the stomach. We stopped what we were doing, and as a nation tried to comprehend what was happening. The stories of the victims and their families are by far the moist poignant, but there is a collective poignancy to all the tales of, "It was an ordinary day...until the moment it wasn't."
A lot of people died while I ate my oatmeal that morning, but I didn't know it while I was reading Dear Abby and drinking a diet Coke. I was unemployed, but I had an interview lined up for the next morning and I felt hopeful about it. Jeff was asleep, having come home from the night shift at the airport. He hadn't stayed up to get things done like he sometimes did, but had crawled into bed to lie next to me while I slept late the way unemployed people often do. He had just had an interview within his company the week before, to work in maintenance scheduling. They told him he pretty much had the job as soon as the paperwork was done, and we were looking forward to him having a normal, 8 to 5, Monday through Friday work schedule for once.
Of course, we didn’t know that the aviation industry was about to be turned on its head; that in the upcoming months thousands of people would lose their jobs when the public would suddenly turned too fearful to fly. They never called Jeff back about the position.
When I woke up that September morning, things were looking up, in general. Life was good, and getting better.
One thing about my personal habits is that I never turn on the TV set in the morning, because I know if I do I will spend my whole morning watching junk and not getting anything done. For some reason, that day I did after breakfast, thinking maybe I'd catch a trashy talk show. Instead, al programs had been interrupted for a breaking story in New York: a passenger jet had crashed into the World Trade Center.
At first, everyone assumed it must be an accident. I went upstairs to wake up my husband. When you work in aviation, all plane crashes are personal, and he would want to know. I always call him and let him know about plane crashes.
"Did they say how many souls?" he usually asks. By souls he means living human beings that were lost. Aviation people differentiate between souls and bodies that might be in coffins in the cargo hold. Jeff's job as maintenance inspector is to keep planes from crashing and the people in them from dying. When a plane goes down, he and the people he works with gather round to listen, read about, and discuss what went wrong. Their interest isn't casual curiosity: the crews of these planes are part of their extended tribe and the passengers are wards in their care.
I shook him awake and told him what happened. He looked at me blankly with sleepy eyes and made me repeat myself, then leapt out of bed to see for himself. We watched on the TV as the second plane hit. Jeff's face was grim, I kept my hand over my mouth the way I do when I am shocked.
"This wasn't an accident," I said. I am one of those people who sometimes must voice the obvious in order to wrap my mind around it.
"Nope," Jeff said. I don't remember us saying much more.
After that we watched. We learned about the other two planes, in Washington D.C. and in Pennsylvania. We watched the people fall from the floors above the impact, having to choose between a painful death by fire and a long, terrifying but ultimately less painful drop. We watched the towers collapse. We watched the people fleeing ground zero, looking for all the world like granite statues brought to life because all of them, no matter what their race, where a uniform shade of gray from the rubble of the falling buildings. After awhile, Jeff went back to bed. He had to work that night, and expected it to be an intense and emotional ordeal. Eventually, I turned off the TV. I wrote on my calendar that day, "WWIII begins."
In hindsight, the war to come would have a lot more in common with Vietnam, but I didn't know that yet.
For my parents' generation the question was always, "Where were you when you heard about the Kennedy assignation?" Their parents remembered what they were doing when they heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was my generation's moment when we all stopped as a group and turned to look in the same direction all at the same time. It changed the way we thought and lived.
It was humbling to stand there, the last of the superpowers thinking no one could harm us, only to be sucker-punched by a group of fanatics bearing fingernail files and utility knives. As a nation, we don't do humble very well - it's just not part of who we are.
We woke up that morning, and things were ordinary. We went to bed, and we didn't know what ordinary was any more, because the very definition of our ordinary day-by-day existence was in a state of change. Almost a decade later, we have to an extent gained a new sense of what's ordinary, but it's not the same one we had before.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 10:16 pm (UTC)My son was a 5 mo old infant. I was laying on the bed in our new place feeding him as he was cradled in my arms when my mom walked in and said, "Something terrible just happened."
My husband and brother were at our old place packing up and I assumed that the former landlord had attacked my husband as he had threatened to do the week before (the landlord later murdered his own wife and her son)
I looked up at my mom, fearful she would say I would now a widow. At the time, I was 23 years old.
She said, "A plane crashed, we have to go listen to a radio, did you move the TV over yet?"
I said, "A plane crashed?"
(callously, I admit, I wondered why this made her so upset. Plane crashes ARE very sad but it seems they happen rather often, on a global scale)
She said, "Yes, into a building, on purpose, it was an attack. Lots of people are dying."
And she ran out to find my brother.
And I admit, I lay and finished feeding my son. I worried as I cradled him, honestly, I wondered what kind of world we had brought him into, if nothing was safe anymore. What would happen to my son as he grew up?
She drove back to the old place, found my husband and brother and they walked over to the neighbor we had only met once to watch their TV so we could know what happened.
Later in the day, we hooked up our TV and I admit, for a day or two, I didn't unpack much, just watched the news over and over, as the played and replayed the crashes. I remember any time they lost touch with an airplane they worried that another plane had been taken over, even a day or two later.
It was a scary time. All the stories of the families who lost their family members made me cry. They still do. To them, it was a day just like any other....until it wasn't. And their lives changed forever.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 03:56 pm (UTC)I'm glad I was alone in the car, because I bawled like a baby through the whole story.
If you need a good cry, the story is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112676905
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 10:57 pm (UTC)No, I wasn't in New York or D.C. that day, but like you said, this was a moment our entire nation was sucker-punched in the gut. And it still hurts. It's good to remember. We're doomed if we allow ourselves to forget the horror of that day.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 06:36 pm (UTC)