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I was sitting at the very desk where I'm sitting now when a co-worker came by and asked if I could get the all news radio station in on my radio. She said a plane had hit the WTC and the internet news sites were so swamped you couldn't get to them. I turned on my radio and she and I were listening to the news coverage when the second plane hit. Initially, we figured it was an awful accident. The realization of that second plane meant that it was deliberate, quite a shock. Someone ended up pulling a TV out (we only use TVs to show corporate DVDs and stuff around here.. not many of them around) and getting NBC News in with a very fuzzy signal. Right about then, they were reporting about a plane hitting the Pentagon and that was when I started to feel really scared. They were attacking our government. If the Pentagon wasn't safe, what was? We were all crying and praying at work, watching the towers collapse, hearing rumors about 250 more planes unaccounted for, car bombs near the White House, so many rumors going around. Then the plane in PA. It was just all so shocking, horrifying and terrifying. Some of the images will never leave my head and make me really sick, especially the ones of people jumping from the WTC. How awful must it have been in there to even consider jumping? So scary. In the afternoon, I went into the sundry shop in our building and saw a newspaper from that morning where the headline was "Michael Jordan Coming out of Retirement" and I very clearly remember thinking "That's from when the world was still normal". My ex-husband had my kids that week so I went home to an empty house. My sorority alumnae club had a meeting that night and I was glad they didn't cancel it. I didn't want to be alone that night. For the next several days I had a very hard time NOT watching the coverage on CNN/MSNBC/FOX news network. I kind of had to force myself away from it. I was coaching soccer at the time, it turned out that Todd Beamer's niece was on my soccer team and we took up a collection for his family. His wife is the one who wrote the "Let's Roll" book. The next several months were really difficult for everybody in this country, I think. However, over time, things feel "normal" again. I feel just as secure as I did on 9/10/01 at this point in time. And, that's probably dangerous for all of us.
My life surely hasn't changed much at all with the exception of more inconveniences when you fly. The incident with the Coast Guard this morning doesn't help my confidence that our Homeland Security Department is really improving communications among all of our first responder agencies. I kind of figured at the time of 9/11 that it would be a while before any more terrorist attacks were attempted here.. once we relaxed, once we got complacent again. That's probably the biggest concern at this point. Have we become complacent again?
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