Where were you when you heard/saw the news on September 11, 2001?

There are only a handful of days in our life's history when we can remember exactly what we were doing and where and when a certain event happened. For me those days include:

1) The day Kennedy was assassinated. (The whole day is like a video I can replay in my brain any time I need to recall it).

2) The first time I had sex with my then-boyfriend.

3) The day I left home to go live on my own in Boston.

4) The day my ex-husband came home from Viet Nam and I met him, along with his parents and brother, at the airport in Washington, D.C.

5a) & 5b) Of course, my two wedding days.

6) The day I walked into my little apartment in Salem and answered the phone to hear my brother say "Rebecca, your Papa is dead!" just like that... no warning or anything!

7) The day OJ Simpson was acquitted of the double murder that he committed!

8) The 11th of September 2001 when this country was attacked.

And I think that's about it for me. Oh, yes, I can remember other things, but those were all momentous events in my life and for some reason, even though there are whole periods of time for which I have no memory, those always stand out and are crystal clear to me.

So what were YOU doing on 9/11/01?

My story (and I'm sticking to it!) was that I was sitting at my desk upstairs in this house typing medical reports which was my job then. I worked at home doing medical transcription. I had no clue what had transpired that morning until my phone rang around 11 am.

It was my friend Sandy (from Iowa) calling and she was very excited and talking fast and asked me what the heck was going on over on the East Coast? I said that I didn't know and she then told me what she knew so far... that we were under attack.

I went in and turned on the TV in the other room and saw Tom Brokaw sitting there like a zombie trying to relate the news of that awful day. I started to physically shake.

Then I noticed jets flying all around our skies overhead. I thought, at first, that those were more terrorists trying to attack us here and I shook even more. I needed to get my work typed and brought back to the office so I just pulled myself together, sat back down at my desk, plugged in to my transcription machine, and went to work - completed my typing in about 2 hours and then I was free to put the news back on.

I drove over to the office to deliver my work, about 8 miles from here, and the whole time I kept watching the skies thinking a missile would fall on my car at any second. I was still shaking.

Later that afternoon, after I'd returned home with more work to type, Paul came home from lobstering. I was sitting here watching the news on TV, and we just looked at each other with wide-eyed glazed stares... wow! He didn't know much at that point as he isn't in contact with any news while he is out working, but he'd heard something about it, not much. We both sat here and listened to the various news people tell the tale of horror and destruction.

I guess we both thought that our luck had run out finally... living in a safe country had come to an end.

So here it is, the 13th anniversary of that dreadful day tomorrow.

What was your story about that day?

Bex





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Pages from the American Notebooks, Nathaniel Hawthorne

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