That Tuesday morning I was sitting in my "big girl's cube" listening to the local talk radio.
Mom had come up the night before and my brother had taken her and her friend to the airport that morning, heading to Las Vegas.
Honestly, I barely noticed the first news report. I was thinking "Isolated Incident" nowhere near where I live.
Then I heard the second report. Two planes, not one. Not some small aircraft that got confused and somehow impossibly flew into the World Trade Center. TWO planes. I remember telling my next-door cube mate what I thought I had just heard on the radio. He said, "What?" I told him it sounded like a terrorist attack, but I still didn't really believe it. And I certainly could never imagine the magnitude.
Not yet anyway
I walked out of my cube into a conference room and found that one of the IT guys had already brought up the news station and it was airing against the wall through the projector. That was when I was stunned into silence. The images of the second plane were airing and I felt my hand immediately cover my mouth. Watch the videos of anyone watching and we all cover our mouths. What is that? I can only assume it's an unconscious movement to keep you from screaming.
And it only got worse.
As the chaos grew, I emailed my nephew to find the flight tracker website so we could monitor mom's plane. I never feared for her safety, maybe because I did not yet realize how pervasive the attacks were.
When all the planes were ordered to land, I remember watching the flight tracker and for a good 30 minutes her plane apparently continued on it's course. She was over New Mexico. Then I couldn't get any data.
My phone rings.
This is during the middle of a national crisis, right? By now, no one in America was not aware of what was going on in our country, hell no one in the WORLD is not aware. We were being attacked and I get a call from "ASAP Brenda". She was known in the company for always thinking everything she did required you to drop what you are doing and fix it.
She was asking for another stupid request that amounted to nothing on a normal day much less in the middle of a NATIONAL CRISIS. I finally said, "You know Brenda, I really just don't care, right now my mother is in the air and I'm trying to figure out where she is and if she's safe!!!" What a freaking idiot
Suddenly the flight tracker showed mom's plane destination was now Albuquerque. I called for a hotel reservation, then I called several people in my family in case mom ended up calling one of them.
People in the air?
Mom's friend told her she thought they had turned around. Mom thought she was crazy at first. Her friend tells her the sun is now on the other side of the plane, but they didn't think they were near Las Vegas yet.
The pilot came on and said that there had been "a national emergency in New York" and they were ordered to land the plane. Now, think about that. You have to realize how confusing this had to have been for people in the air. On a plane bound to Las Vegas from Indy, why would a national emergency in NY cause them to land immediately? What was going on was inconcievable for those watching it, it would take even longer for those not glued to the news during this time.
When they landed in Albuquerque, mom thought they would just find another plane. Someone told them they MUST leave the airport. It made no sense to those people just getting dropped in another city. Amazingly the Red Cross was already at the airport assisting people. This organization must be unbelievably organized.
When she got off the plane, mom called the only person in my family I had NOT told I had a hotel waiting. She called my brother-in-law.
Southwest Airlines. You've heard some of the horror stories of how people were treated by the airlines. Not Southwest. THEY found the passengers a hotel, THEY PAID for their rooms and THEY refunded their tickets. Nice to know some companies took responsibility for the passengers when this nation faced the worst crisis ever.
The owner of the company I worked for was from New York and he came from a long line of fire fighters in New York City. Sometime mid-day he called the company together and gave what he called one of his "Desktop Talks". He stood on a desk and told us his family background and that at that point he was still not sure of all of his loved ones statuses. He told the salepeople they were not to make any sales calls and then he said, "But we WILL work. It's obvious those who are attacking us do NOT want us to work and I don't want them to win."
Now obviously I can't say that ALOT of work got done, there was too much going on throughout the day. But everyone admired his courage knowing that he was worried about friends and family back home.
Mom wasn't able to fly home until Friday. My brothers and I all went together to get her at the airport. It was eerily quiet and empty at the airport and being patroled by the National Guard. It was both reassuring and amazingly scary all at the same time.
Neither Bob nor I slept well for months. As I related in a previous post, Bob said that if the Army would take someone his age, he would have enlisted and fought against whatever war was obviously being waged upon us.
9/11 changed my life. No, not in some drastic way that I imagined on that morning, but in a more subtle way.
When I see an older movie, I think, "Was this before 9/11 or after?" When I think about things that happened within the last few years, I wonder the same thing. I find that unconsciously I have divided my life in half. What happened before 9/11 and what happened after. I can no more forget what happened than those that lived through Pearl Harbor.
I no longer believe I am safe. Even here in the middle of this wonderful country. I no longer believe we are safe. I cannot ever support cutting back on our military spending, it would just give a green light to those that simply want us dead.
When we were in Italy, our private driver was telling us that his then-girlfriend called him that day and told him that she had friends in NY and they were in the World Trade Center and she was hysterical.
I told him that there are many in our country that believe we should forget about 9/11. He said, "I don't know how you could ever do that."
Neither do I.
Neither do I.
And I'm MAD all over again. Sadly, the video attached to the original link has been scrubbed.
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