Where Were You Ten Years Ago?

I originally published this post on 9/11/06.  I now have two children who will never know what life was like before 9/11/01.  I’m sad for them, but they don’t know the difference.

I wasn’t going to write a post, but again I was inspired by another blogger, Jane Gassner, who in turn was inspired by, well, so many things.

I had just started my job at E! Networks and I was up early that morning. Really early, like 6am. I don’t remember why I got up that early that day, but there I was, drinking my coffee, reading the paper. We didn’t watch TV in the morning in those days, and even now we only watch Sesame Street. Then my mother called, and said “Where is Holly’s building in New York?” and “Turn on the TV!”

And the world then was forever changed.

As I recall, I turned on the TV between the crashes of the first and second planes. When the second plane hit I decided to wake Stewart up. I remember thinking that the first plane crash must have been a horrible freak accident, but when the second one hit my stomach sank even further and I knew it was something very, very bad.

We sat in stunned silence watching the towers fall. I cried. Stewart became enraged. We couldn’t look away. But I had just started my new job, and I had to go to work. I peeled myself away from the TV and got ready to go. Once I was in the car and I turned on the radio, I realized that it wasn’t just me and Stewart sitting there, glued to the TV. The announcers on every single station were giving updates and I believe I learned of the Pentagon crash while driving over the hill.

I got to the office. It was a ghost town. The only other people there were my boss and the other guy who had just started working there. We sat in my boss’s office and watched more coverage. I called Holly’s office every five seconds. (Holly is my dear friend, a lawyer who was working on Park Avenue at the time.) As the news just got worse and worse, my boss gave up, and let us go home. I mean, how can one write about Kirk Cameron’s rise to fame when 3,000 people were just turned into noxious dust?

So, like so many others, Stewart and I sat in front of the television all day long, letting fear and disgust and sadness and despair overtake us. Our reactions were very different, but both very intense. The day turned into night. There were candlelight vigils on major street corners in our neighborhood. People waved the American flag. People were nice to each other.

The next day we both went back to work, and our lives began crawling back into a normal routine. But I was supposed to go back east that weekend, to stand as a bridesmaid in Tina and Greg’s wedding. It was the first day that air traffic was allowed to resume. I rode a shuttle bus to LAX, which was closed to all other traffic. It was eerie. No people or cars besides the shuttle buses and the inspectors and armed soldiers. Hardly any people in one of the world’s busiest airports. I checked in. I cleared security. I felt safe.

At the gate, I waited for the boarding call. Well into the night. Finally, the gate agent announced that the good news was that we had a plane, but the bad news was that there was no crew to fly it. We all went home. I waited until it was 7:30 AM in New Haven to call and tell Tina I wasn’t coming. Fucking terrorists.

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