Mon 11 Sep 2006
Reading Jordan’s blog today got me thinking about my September 11, 2001. I’ve never told anyone the details of what happened with me that day, mostly because I am ashamed of the first half of it.
Because New York is 3 hours ahead of California, when it all went down, I was still in bed. The phone ringing woke me up. It was my then-boyfriend, Gary. “A plane just hit one of the Twin Towers in New York!” he exclaimed. That meant nothing to me. I’d never been to the Towers, didn’t know about the now infamous landmark. I was just annoyed that he woke me up. I said something crankily into the phone and hung up, rolled over and went back to sleep. Some time later, I was once again awoken by Gary. “A second plane just hit the tower! You better call Grace and make sure she’s okay!” he said excitedly (but not in a good way). “I’m sure she’s fine!” I said, and prepared to hang up again. “CALL HER!” he told me. “They’re saying it’s an ATTACK on America!” What the hell. I hung up, once again pulled the cover over my face, made myself go back to sleep, and overslept. A third phone call woke me up, and when I saw the time, I leapt out of bed in a panic and did not get the phone. Turned out it was my court reporter. She left a message on my answering machine and said they were evacuating our courthouse and other government buildings are shutting down, so if I had not left for work yet, I needn’t come in. (She gets to work super-early.) I finally was curious enough about what’s going on to turn on the TV in the downstairs living room, and since every channel was playing the same breaking news, I didn’t even need to look for information. I stood close to the TV to see it since I hadn’t put my glasses on yet, and as the images processed in my brain, as tiny suit-clad people fell out of two smoking highrises on national television, I on the other end of the country fell to my knees. And cried, and cried and cried.
Grace lived and worked close enough to the Twin Towers to have the immediate air around her affected by the smoke and debris, but as I found out later, she wasn’t home, nor at work, because her leukemia recently had acted up enough that her concerned doctor had hospitalized her to keep an eye on her to make sure she wasn’t coming out of remission. Her then-fiance Justin had just walked through the Twin Towers and gotten on the subway to his office at Deutsche Bank, so was out of harm’s way. Grace’s father, who was visiting, was near the towers when everything went crazy. Grace’s mother, at the hospital with her, called and called her husband’s cell phone but could not get through. The rooftop of the towers served as a communications signal relay point and when the buildings were hit, many satellites and other cell sites couldn’t bring their signals down to the people. They eventually heard from her dad, who only managed a seconds-long phone call to say he was all right and trying to find a way through the mess to get to the hospital to them, before the phone call went dead again.
The next day at work, before we called our first case in Law & Motion, my judge took the bench and asked the courtroom to observe a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in New York, the Pentagon and United Flight 93’s foiled attack. The courtroomful of civil adversaries bowed their heads collectively and for once, was actually “civil” in their shared grief and patriotism.
We will never forget.
“We will never forget.”
Never.
I heard a talk radio personality yesterday as I was driving after work; he was complaining (and his callers were complaining) that the media oversaturated the air waves with the terrorist bombing stuff and everybody’s sick of seeing it on TV and hearing about it and the families impacted by this directly don’t want to continuously be reminded of how they lost a loved one and just want to move on and forget, but the media makes moving on impossible. That particular radio personality, altho his ratings are high, always has something to bitch and moan about.
what he’s referring to, is dwelling. no one is dwelling, they are re-living and memorializing the day, the event, the people and family members afflicted.. to MOVE on or forward you must be able to talk about it. this was the biggest and most horrifying even for americans since vietnam (and even on a much larger scale).. to not talk about it, is to forget. we’ll never forget..so we’re going to continue to talk about it. I guess my response to him would be simple. “Blow me”
Actually, his angle on this “media overkill” was that the only reason it’s all over the news and stuff is because it happened in Manhattan, NY, where most media are based. He said if it happened in Los Angeles, people wouldn’t care to memorialize it 5 years straight; they’d just say, “Oh, that sucks, are they all gonna fall into the ocean now? haha” and move on. But because it was in New York, they’ve made it all about THEM, i.e. “Boohoo, look what another thing New Yorkers have to make it through.” He said the attack happened in 3 locations but no one even remembers the Pentagon or the field Flight 93 landed in, because New York has eclipsed all media focus except on their own spotlight.
I had totally forgotten bout that morning.
I’m sure you would have reacted diffently if i were to have taken a more subtle approach. You know like, instead of me yelling at you “Omg! Call Grace! Call her NOW!”, like an idiot.
I know that Grace is dear to you. And i know you would have done the same for me.
HAHAHA! It’s funny to hear you characterize it that way, cuz it never occurred to me that your approach was idiotic.
I have to give you props for blaming yourself for an approach. Altho I don’t think you did anything wrong, the fact that you’d look back at a situation and say, “Hmm, how could I have done that better?” shows a lot of growth and maturity.