Remembering 9/11

It's a beautiful morning.  I rode my bike to work because I could.  The air was a fresh, crisp 60 degrees with a sunny glow.  I was having a perfect hair day and even wearing my bike helmet (which I rarely do but have decided is a good idea for commuting) seemed only to preserve the look.

Then, I remembered it was 9/11.  Like most of us, I'm sure, I can place myself exactly in  the place and point in time when I recall that sad, disturbing world-changing event.  I was walking from my parking space at Graham Cottage to my office in the Student Center at Transy. It was just such a beautiful day as this with the beginning coolness of autumn and the promise of a warm summer afternoon.  My sister Lynda called me from Peddie's hospital room where Peddie had just had what was left of an exploded appendix removed the afternoon before.  It had been a long few days of trying to convince doctors that there really was something wrong with my sweet niece -- that's a story for another time.

Something was happening at the World Trade Center. 

I'm not a rusher to watch things on TV.  Probably because my mom calls me constantly to tell me to turn the TV on for this or that but this time I did.  Maybe because Lynda called?  She's not much of a TV news watcher either.  I hurried with a quicker step to the campus center canteen and turned on the big TV there.  As I watched through the cameras eye and listened to the building chaos of the first event, a light streak shot across the sky like a daytime comet and something popped with a small wisp of smoke into the side of the second tower.  Do you remember hearing the reporters speculate on what just happened?  It seemed like such a long time before they realized the streaking missiles were airplanes. 

We had staff meetings every Tuesday 9:30 am.  Typically, I was the first person to work in the mornings. It was no great skill of mine being early but merely the result of coming straight to work after dropping children off at school.  As our staff came together, I was the only person who knew what was happening out in the greater world.  These were the days before smart phones, texting, tweeting and constantly checking Facebook as you walked across campus. As our meeting began I kept thinking how wrong it was that we were sitting there having our stupid meeting while the towers were falling down and our world was coming apart.  I needed to be watching television.  Finally, my anxiety proving contagious to everyone else, the Dean suggested with a critical eye on me that perhaps our minds were in other places this morning and we might adjourn since some of us were too preoccupied to focus on our agenda. 

I think time later proved that 9:30 in the morning on Tuesday, September 11 was not the ideal time for a staff meeting.  I left campus for a few minutes after that.  I went to the bank and I took out $600 in cash that I had just deposited that morning.  My thought, that we, our family or friends, might need some cash if indeed whatever was happening in New York impacted our banking system.  I thought, too, of going to get Will and Mary Rollins from school.  I know friends who did take their kids from school that day in the hour that followed. 

Sometimes, I like to ask the kids what they remember about 9/11.  They don't remember much being 3 and 5 at the time.  Will had a toy airplane that he started flying into the refrigerator in the days after and I, of course, wondered if he was making his own 9/11 re-enactment.        

What do you remember?