11 September

Today's date is one that is spoken in capital letters, a date that can never be mentioned without a catch in the voice.

I was at home that morning. I was between jobs (a nice way of saying unemployed) and because my severance pay from the job I was laid off from had ended, I had an appointment at the unemployment office. I did not have the television or the radio on, unaware of the horror that was unfolding. James called me and asked if I would turn on the television and tell him what was happening, because their office at JFK had mentioned something before their telephone communications went down.

I was astounded. I would tell him what I was seeing and then he would tell the other people in the office. The second plane hit while we were talking. I finally had to leave to go to the unemployment office and when I got arrived, there was a television on in the waiting area. I was waiting to be called when the first tower fell. The woman sitting next to me grabbed my hand and we sat there, holding hands and crying. I had never seen her before and I have never seen her since, but at that moment, we comforted each other.

I had to run an errand on the way home and when I walked into whatever store it was, the cashier took one look at me and we both started crying again. It was all I could do to drive home.

Amidst all the tears, I remember being angry - and I am still angry. That janitors and administrative assistants and waiters and receptionists and accountants and any number of “ordinary” people, just trying to make a living, went to their seemingly safe job that day and were murdered.

My friend Val’s husband is a pilot for Northwest and was flying that day. She was, of course, in a panic until she heard that it was an American Airlines airplane and a United airplane…she realized that at the same moment she was breathing a sigh of relief, some other spouse/partner/child/parent was experiencing the opposite emotion.

11 September 2001. It seems like a world away but it also seems like yesterday.