Where were you 10 years ago? Remembering 9/11/2001

I know this post is a day late, yesterday being 10 years since 9/11/2001, but I wanted to do this post anyway since I just didn't have a chance yesterday.
All last week NPR was doing small segments of 9/11 recounts and such. It was a nice touch to remembering those who lost their lives on that tragic day. One thing about this anniversary is the realization that any child in 5th grade or younger wasn't even born yet, and anyone between the ages of 10-20 years old probably doesn't have much of a recollection of that day either. It seems like such a foreign concept that we already have two generations that don't know anything about that day except what we have taught them. 9/11 has become to these younger generations like the death of President Kennedy (something my parents experienced and tried to explain, but that I never fully understood), and what Pearl Harbor (an event experienced by my grandparents that they tried to relate to my parents and my generation). All three events are never to be forgotten, but that as time passes, the younger generations don't understand the magnitude of these events. For this reason, I want to record my memory of 9/11 in a place where I can recount the day as I experienced it, so I can teach my children about it someday.

9/11/2001
I was 22 yrs old, working as a Project Accountant for Partners HealthCare, Real Estate Division, for Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Brookline, MA. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I took the bus to work from my house in Allston, and walked some of the way, enjoying the beautiful September morning. I remember I got to work on time that day, about 8 am. I was just getting settled in with the work I had to do that day when I turned on the radio. Must have been about 8:20. The morning newscaster reported in the daily news that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center in NY. I remember thinking how stupid must someone be to hit such a big building with a plane. The week before there had been a similar report of a small plane that hit a building in D.C or somewhere like that. So I immediatly thought this was some kind of copycat event. Within a few minutes, the morning radio DJ interrupted the morning routine to inform listeners that it wasn't a small plane, but a commercial airliner that had hit the tower. Now that caught my attention. I immediatly got on the internet to CNN news to see what was happening, knowing they'd have live video of what was going on. I distinctly remember pulling up that webpage and seeing the smoldering tower with the large gash in its side.
Someone else in the office had heard the news, and had gone in the conference room and turned on the TV to the news. Someone came by my office and said, "Have you see this? They've got it on the TV in the conference room." So there we were, maybe 10 of us in the office gathered in the conference room together watching the screen when the second plane hit the other tower.
At that moment the realization of this not being an accident, but being something intentional hit us all with such magnitude that we were completely dumbfounded. No one said a word. I'm sure my jaw was dropped, my mouth open in utter shock. Everything seemed to be in slow motion.
Within a minute or two, I did what every young girl does when tragedy strikes, I called my mom. I went back to my desk, CNN news still up on the internet on my screen, and called my mom in Utah, knowing it was too early in the morning there for her to have the radio or the TV on yet. Mom answered, and I remember blurting out, "Turn on your TV. Something bad has happened. I can't explain it. Just go turn on the TV!" So there I was hanging on to the comfort of my mother's voice as we experienced the unfolding events together. As I was on the phone with my mom, I was watching the news and seeing people jumping from the towers. I knew it was really bad when people were jumping to their deaths from a skyscraper rather than die in whatever was happening in the buildings.
I don't remember how long we were on the phone before she had to hang up to get my younger siblings ready for school, which they ended up not going. Schools were closed.
I called Nathan, my boyfriend at the time, to make sure he had heard, and just to get some comfort.
I was sitting at my desk, still watching the news when the first tower started to collapse. I ran back to the conference room, and the awful scene of the collapsing towers, all the lives lost and the damage there, the fire fighters, the emergency workers, the dust everywhere…it was almost too much to watch. As if that wasn’t enough, then the news of the plane crashing at the Pentagon came on, and then news of flight 93 in Pennsylvania.
Somewhere in the mix of it all, it was announced that one of the planes that flew into the WTC originated from Boston’s Logan Airport. With that information, most businesses in Boston closed for the day. We were sent home wondering whether there’d be similar attacks all day in big cities. I was so scared. The attackers achieved their goal—I was terrified.
I took the bus home, and wandered back to my apartment not knowing what to do. My roommates and I were glued to the TV the rest of the day. I’m sure Nathan came over at some point, but I don’t recall much about the rest of the day except that I felt like I was in a daze. It was all just too much. I do remember praying that night for sleep and safety. Everyone was emotionally exhausted.
As the days, weeks, and months unfolded, the dead were accounted for, and stories began to be shared, the events of 9/11 seared a place in my memory. It is something I’ll never, never forget. That fateful day changed the United States, I think, especially for my generation that hadn’t really experienced anything like this before. Sure we had gone through the first Gulf War, but I was so young then, and we “liberated Kuwait.” Good won over evil, or so I thought in my young 11-year old mind.
But after 9/11, suddenly we were not the invincible country I had grown up thinking we were. The United States was vulnerable; our way of life was not secure. I learned how fragile life is, and how unprepared we are for the unexpected. It certainly awakened me on a personal/spiritual level, finally somehow realizing that it’s as the scriptures say, that this life is the time to prepare to meet God.
The turn of events that followed changed my life forever. Nathan lost his job as a result of the economic downturn of 9/11. He went back to school, choosing to attend the University of Utah. I followed him and we moved to Utah in 2002. Our relationship got more serious, and we started preparing for marriage. A lot has happened since then. It’s not that all of those things resulted directly from 9/11, but I think it did have a part.
Looking back 10 years later, the sorrow for the lives lost, the lives impacted, is still there. I didn’t realize how deep those feelings were for me until I started thinking about 9/11 this week with all the news bits reminding me. I saw a picture on someone’s FB of the smoking Twin Towers and could hardly even look at it. The emotions that image stirs makes my stomach churn. I hope that someday when I teach my kids about 9/11, I can relay all this to them in a way they will understand. But more importantly, I hope that the memory of 9/11 drives us to love one another, and to find hope and joy in every day because there is always the unexpected.