It's Been 18 Years?
I guess you know by now what today is the anniversary of. It's kind of hard to avoid. I've already had to put up with Jim's conspiracy rant on 9/11 this morning. Told him to shush, tell it to his fellow conspiracy pals.
A friend of mine was talking about that day today on her Facebook feed and it got me thinking about that day. I did originally have it up on my old blog, that awful day. I was still firmly part of my old church and there were some surreal moments of that day involving the church.
I got up that morning with Jim, at 4:45 am, and prayed after he left. It was a beautiful sunny gorgeous day in Northern Virginia. After getting the kids off to school and doing a few loads of laundry I sat down with my coffee in front of the tv to fold clothes and watch the news. It was shortly after the first place had hit, and no one was sure of what had happened, if it was just a tragic accident.
Abandoning my coffee and laundry I watched, horror struck when the second plane hit, realizing in that moment that this was no accident, pilot error or mechanical failure. This was deliberate. I tried calling Jim in D.C., on his job and he didn't know what I was talking about. Then the third plane hit the Pentagon.
The rest of day was me sitting in front of the tv weeping in front of my lap top. The phone lines crashed on the East Coast, I could not call Jim. Watching as all mass transit was stopped from going in or out of D.C., watching as thousands of grim faced federal works streamed out on foot after they were all ushered out of their federal buildings and tossed into the streets.
One of the most disturbing things about that day was the rumors that were given credence and endlessly repeated on the D.C. television stations. Things like a plane had been spotted heading towards the Capital Building (Jim worked Capital Hill adjacent) or that the State Dept was fire bombed and a host of other bad things that turned out not to be true.
At the same time I was fielding phone calls from Indiana and Louisiana, relatives wanting reassurance that Jim was safe, reassurance I could not give them because I had no idea where he was in the midst of all that madness.
The other calls, not so nice. A few from fellow Possum Creek members that were concerned. I heard the sad news that one of our members had been scheduled to work that flight that flew into the Pentagon and that no one knew if she'd been on it. The pastor and several friends stopped by to see how I was. I wasn't really in the mood for company, talking for for a few minutes, getting prayer and sending them on their way. All that was nice, in retrospect. What sticks out as awful is that Tom and Tina Smith called repeatedly. Tom angrily attacked me, insisting I must know the fate of my husband. He called so often that by this point the pastor had to tell him to stop it.
Tom made a hard day just that much harder.
The kids schools both called, wanting to know if someone would be home for the kids. They called the families of all students who had at least one parent working in Washington. I thought that was actually pretty sweet and caring, to make sure the kids were going into a safe environment if something awful had happened to their parents.
Just about the time the kids buses showed up and dropped them off Jim came home. Never have I ever been so happy to see him before. We cried and hugged with the kids. Everyone just grateful to be safe and alive and together.
Jim had been rudely dumped into the streets with the other federal workers with no way to get home. He ended up with a guy he knew from the commuter train, and they ended up taking a convoluted trek home involving catching a bus, then a MARC train, getting well clear of D.C. before that man's ex wife picked them up and gave them rides to the train station commuter lot where they were both parked.
If there's anything I regret that day it's that it robbed us as Americans of our sense of safety in this world. Perhaps it was just never safe and we mistakenly thought it was.
A friend of mine was talking about that day today on her Facebook feed and it got me thinking about that day. I did originally have it up on my old blog, that awful day. I was still firmly part of my old church and there were some surreal moments of that day involving the church.
I got up that morning with Jim, at 4:45 am, and prayed after he left. It was a beautiful sunny gorgeous day in Northern Virginia. After getting the kids off to school and doing a few loads of laundry I sat down with my coffee in front of the tv to fold clothes and watch the news. It was shortly after the first place had hit, and no one was sure of what had happened, if it was just a tragic accident.
Abandoning my coffee and laundry I watched, horror struck when the second plane hit, realizing in that moment that this was no accident, pilot error or mechanical failure. This was deliberate. I tried calling Jim in D.C., on his job and he didn't know what I was talking about. Then the third plane hit the Pentagon.
The rest of day was me sitting in front of the tv weeping in front of my lap top. The phone lines crashed on the East Coast, I could not call Jim. Watching as all mass transit was stopped from going in or out of D.C., watching as thousands of grim faced federal works streamed out on foot after they were all ushered out of their federal buildings and tossed into the streets.
One of the most disturbing things about that day was the rumors that were given credence and endlessly repeated on the D.C. television stations. Things like a plane had been spotted heading towards the Capital Building (Jim worked Capital Hill adjacent) or that the State Dept was fire bombed and a host of other bad things that turned out not to be true.
At the same time I was fielding phone calls from Indiana and Louisiana, relatives wanting reassurance that Jim was safe, reassurance I could not give them because I had no idea where he was in the midst of all that madness.
The other calls, not so nice. A few from fellow Possum Creek members that were concerned. I heard the sad news that one of our members had been scheduled to work that flight that flew into the Pentagon and that no one knew if she'd been on it. The pastor and several friends stopped by to see how I was. I wasn't really in the mood for company, talking for for a few minutes, getting prayer and sending them on their way. All that was nice, in retrospect. What sticks out as awful is that Tom and Tina Smith called repeatedly. Tom angrily attacked me, insisting I must know the fate of my husband. He called so often that by this point the pastor had to tell him to stop it.
Tom made a hard day just that much harder.
The kids schools both called, wanting to know if someone would be home for the kids. They called the families of all students who had at least one parent working in Washington. I thought that was actually pretty sweet and caring, to make sure the kids were going into a safe environment if something awful had happened to their parents.
Just about the time the kids buses showed up and dropped them off Jim came home. Never have I ever been so happy to see him before. We cried and hugged with the kids. Everyone just grateful to be safe and alive and together.
Jim had been rudely dumped into the streets with the other federal workers with no way to get home. He ended up with a guy he knew from the commuter train, and they ended up taking a convoluted trek home involving catching a bus, then a MARC train, getting well clear of D.C. before that man's ex wife picked them up and gave them rides to the train station commuter lot where they were both parked.
If there's anything I regret that day it's that it robbed us as Americans of our sense of safety in this world. Perhaps it was just never safe and we mistakenly thought it was.
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