September 11, 2001
I woke up this morning to the sound of the phone ringing. Keith staggered out of bed answered it, and fuzzily I heard him say, "Can I tell her who's calling?" Then he handed the phone to me and said, "It's your mom."
She said, "Did you hear the news?" (Is the President dead? Was there an earthquake? Did a family member die?) "No, what news?" I said. She told me. In the middle of her second sentence, I gestured at Keith to turn on the TV, and he did, and I saw what I thought would be the most horrifying sight I would see all day. I saw the World Trade Center towers with smoke pouring out of the top.
When I got off the phone, I curled up next to Keith and we stayed there and watched the news coverage for the next few hours. I got up once to get breakfast, but then got right back in bed and watched more. We saw when the first tower collapsed. We saw when the second tower collapsed. After the second tower collapsed, I think I forgot to breathe for several long seconds. "What just happened? Where's the tower? What happened to it? Is it still there? I can't see!" and then I could see, and it was gone. Just like that.
All I could think at first was, "But I never even got to visit it." Then I thought, "Oh my God, there must have been thousands of people in there." There were thousands of people in there. Thousands upon thousands, in fact. People who got to work early, because they had a special project to finish up, or because they wanted to impress the boss, or because they are naturally morning people, or because they had a conference call. Or because they just got ultrasound pictures and wanted to hang them up on their cubicle wall. They had plans for the rest of the day, as do we all, except that whereas I eventually did get around to most of what I had planned today, they did not, and now they will never see their friends and loved ones again. (Maybe in the afterlife, if we're all that lucky.)
I cannot even bear to think about the other people, the ones in the planes. The one thing that keeps it from being one hundred percent horrifying is that they probably didn't know they were going to die until the last second, when the plane hit the building. They probably thought that the plane would be diverted to some godforsaken runway, where hostages would be released one by one over the course of a week while the terrorists negotiated with the government. That is what always happens when planes are hijacked. Except this time. This time the planes were flown into the sides of buildings, and the Pentagon, and a field outside Pittsburgh, oddly enough. I guess that one didn't work out as planned.
Every time I turn on the news, something else horrifying and frightening is there. A man jumping from the 60th floor of the tower. The report that someone called 911 from his cell phone in the locked bathroom of one of the hijacked planes. 200 fire fighters killed in the line of duty. (And that's just what we know so far.)
But I also saw the tremendous power of human kindness and civility. I saw a McDonald's manager keeping his store, located at ground zero, open so that rescue workers can drink his water. I saw a Mrs. Field's restaurant giving out all of its food for free. I saw people lined up around the block to give blood. I saw bus drivers opening their doors and giving free rides to as many passengers as they could, to get them away from the blast zone as quickly as possible.
People are wonderful, gracious and good, even MORE than they are awful, hideous, and unspeakable. This is something to remember, and it is the one thing that a tragedy like this has to give us. Whenever human lives are lost in a tragedy of this magnitude, the rest of humanity rises to the challenge at hand. This is the universe apologizing to us for what it has done. This is the beauty and the wonder of the human race.
Excuse me, please, because I know this sounds terribly melodramatic, and we are so ironic and cool and above all of this melodramatic BS, right? Except today I'm not. It's not cool to be patriotic, and it's not cool to say anything really pro-America, because to do that would mean to detach this screen of irony that we all have wrapped around ourselves these days. But I am proud of my fellow countrymen, very proud indeed. Those people standing in line to give blood, they make up for those assholes who screamed at that suicide jumper to "Jump, bitch!" a couple weeks ago. Those people who helped to drag others out of a burning building, they make up for the guy who stole my bike. Those people who shared what they had with others, out of kindness and the goodness of their hearts, they make up for all the evil and all the hurtful people in the world.
It is something to be proud of, and something to cherish, on what has otherwise been a completely hideous day.