Where were you when...?
It was the day after my father's 60th birthday. I woke up, went for a walk (beautiful morning), showered, and put on a pair of dark blue bias-cut jeans and a black short-sleeve shirt. Then I turned on the TV to catch the weather.
It's amazing what you remember 5 years later, isn't it?
It's amazing what you remember 5 years later, isn't it?
posted by WinterWheat | 6:55 AM
4 Comments:
It's funny: I was going to do a 'Where were you when' post on my blog. Oh, well, I'll contribute to yours instead.
I was working on that British Tourist Authority brochure I lost this year. The TV had been showing episodes of Diagnosis Murder in the afternoons and I used to watch them while working (I always work with the radio or the TV on), but that day was so close to my deadline that I decided to tape it and watch it later. I put the TV on so I could press on the record button when it started. I went into the cupboard that I call my kitchen and turned around at some point to see if the programme had started. I'm short-sighted but even from that distance I could see that it wasn't Dick van Dyke on the screen. I came closer and saw the North Tower burning. I stood there transfixed... and then saw what happened next... live. I phoned my partner, who was in an office elsewhere in London. They weren't really aware of what was going on. Then I phoned the people from the agency and told them (they didn't have a set in their office). I kept them informed from time to time of the horrors I was seeing on the screen. I've still got the several stunned emails I sent to my partner as the towers tumbled down.
I went out later to the supermarket and was shocked that no one seemed really aware of the magnitude of the event. I was expecting groups of people discussing it everywhere, but nothing. The Evening Standard bore huge, blaring headlines, but people were picking it up and dropping it in their shopping baskets without a second glance. It took several days for things to sink in here.
It was beautiful in Seattle that morning. By the time I woke up at about nine and turned on NPR, the worst had happened and the shockwaves were already reverberating.
I turned the TV on and watched -- for the first time of many times -- the explosions and the towers collapsing and the people running and the shocked expressions on their faces.
And then I saw the corpse of a plane in the middle of a field in Pennsylvania.
I needed human contact, I needed to know people I loved were ok, I called my SO and my brother.
Later that day, I went to a memorial service at St. James Cathedral because, again, I needed to be with people.
That afternoon, I also tried to give blood but the line to the Puget Sound Blood Center snaked around two blocks.
(Two weeks later I was finally able to get into a Red Cross center ... but they stopped the donation when I fainted. I have always felt guilty about not being able to give that full unit of blood.)
xoxo
I had just started a new job and needed to talk to some people on the fourth floor. So I went upstairs and they were watching the tv in the boardroom. I started to ask them the questions I needed to ask and they said, "You have to see this." The first plane had just crashed into the twin towers and I thought, "Boy that pilot's gonna be in trouble; what a huge cock-up." Then the second plane crashed and I realized that it wasn't an accident.
The image I still see in my mind is all the people running away from the most enormous cloud of dust and smoke when the building came down. And someone running into a store as the black tsunami of horror wooshed past.
I too needed to connect with my loved ones.
My sister has a friend who had a meeting that morning on the 90-something floor. But he was travelling there in a boat and a hurricane delayed his arrival. By the time he arrived, late for his meeting, the harbour had been closed.
My hubby had been working the night shift, and I was trying my best to sleep in. He called me on the commute home, and told me "something's wrong. The morning DJs are saying a plane hit the World Trade Center in NY. I don't think they're joking, but that's pretty sick to joke about. Turn on the news, and see what's happening." Then I saw. I wanted to not see it, but I couldn't stop watching. Even though he'd just worked a whole shift and needed to sleep, he and I both ended up unable to tear ourselves away from the television set that day. And the day after, too. I think we must have it the TV on for three consecutive days straight. It was like, we had to see what was happening, and then we were compelled to keep watching the rescuers to see if they could save anyone.
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