Anniversary Of A Day Gone Wrong
She called her mom right away. "I'm okay ... Yeah, I can see it from here."
She had intended to go shopping at the Center that day, but when she got there the stores weren't yet open. On the way back to her apartment, the first plane hit.
Her first call was to her mother, a thousand miles away, to let her know she was okay. While she was still talking to her -- standing on her balcony in clear view of the towers -- the second plane hit.
This is the story as it was retold to me about my former math teacher's daughter. Her daughter lived and worked in New York, light years from her hometown, but that day ... That day everything got much closer.
I told my own story a few years ago and I really don't need to replay it today. As poignant as those memories are, today I'm finding myself thinking about the things that followed.
I had just started my senior year of high school. That school year went down in history as "the one when 9/11 happened." Nothing went quite as expected. My anatomy class -- anatomy, of all subjects -- decided to raise money for the Red Cross that very week. My current events class had a sudden topic, not a week after our teacher wondered aloud what all we would talk about this year. (After all, the year before had the Presidential race, and the year before that had Y2K.) Even from such a distance, each and every one of us found ourselves affected in some way, directly and indirectly.
It was a "big trip" year for high school band as well, and we were slated to go to -- you guessed it -- New York City. Rather miraculously (and despite the efforts of some parents), that trip still happened. And so it was that a bunch of young bumpkins from South Dakota found themselves on the much-changed streets of New York six months later.
That trip was my first time in a commercial jet, and that experience alone was unlike anything I had imagined.
Since then, we've seen two wars last longer than anyone expected. I've seen many friends go to Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've seen several of those friends struggle to adjust to life back in the States afterwards. We've seen leaders deposed (or disposed, as the case might be) ... We've seen our own stock market go into utter chaos, largely due (directly and indirectly) to the events of that day. We've seen worldwide fear of unexpected things, like unidentified white powders. And oh, have we seen drastic changes in travel.
My generation has had an interesting adjustment, particularly those of us that graduated that year. My entire childhood was before 9/11; my entire adulthood, after. Things that had never occurred to our parents to teach us are problems now. Things that weren't supposed to be scary (visit Greece? Sure!) suddenly were. And things that were never supposed to be normal became commonplace. Metal detectors at national monuments? Limits to liquids you can carry on an airplane? Profiling?
It's not always where you expect it, either. When I travel and either have to or choose to use my passport, I will almost immediately be "randomly" selected for an extra search. The stamps in my passport (combined with my bachelor's degree, which could very well be part of my "official description" ... because let's face it, technology's a little nuts) mean that eyebrows are raised at this otherwise somewhat anonymous, normal-looking woman.
Ten years later, it's hard to tell what's changed because, to be honest, it seems that everything has changed. Our new normal, whatever that means, is so different than what it could have been. And now, we have the strange task of telling kids -- our kids, our friends' kids, our nieces and nephews -- what was, what might have been, and what has happened.
And where we were that day.
I was at school at 7AM that day...
She had intended to go shopping at the Center that day, but when she got there the stores weren't yet open. On the way back to her apartment, the first plane hit.
Her first call was to her mother, a thousand miles away, to let her know she was okay. While she was still talking to her -- standing on her balcony in clear view of the towers -- the second plane hit.
*
This is the story as it was retold to me about my former math teacher's daughter. Her daughter lived and worked in New York, light years from her hometown, but that day ... That day everything got much closer.
I told my own story a few years ago and I really don't need to replay it today. As poignant as those memories are, today I'm finding myself thinking about the things that followed.
I had just started my senior year of high school. That school year went down in history as "the one when 9/11 happened." Nothing went quite as expected. My anatomy class -- anatomy, of all subjects -- decided to raise money for the Red Cross that very week. My current events class had a sudden topic, not a week after our teacher wondered aloud what all we would talk about this year. (After all, the year before had the Presidential race, and the year before that had Y2K.) Even from such a distance, each and every one of us found ourselves affected in some way, directly and indirectly.
It was a "big trip" year for high school band as well, and we were slated to go to -- you guessed it -- New York City. Rather miraculously (and despite the efforts of some parents), that trip still happened. And so it was that a bunch of young bumpkins from South Dakota found themselves on the much-changed streets of New York six months later.
That trip was my first time in a commercial jet, and that experience alone was unlike anything I had imagined.
Since then, we've seen two wars last longer than anyone expected. I've seen many friends go to Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've seen several of those friends struggle to adjust to life back in the States afterwards. We've seen leaders deposed (or disposed, as the case might be) ... We've seen our own stock market go into utter chaos, largely due (directly and indirectly) to the events of that day. We've seen worldwide fear of unexpected things, like unidentified white powders. And oh, have we seen drastic changes in travel.
My generation has had an interesting adjustment, particularly those of us that graduated that year. My entire childhood was before 9/11; my entire adulthood, after. Things that had never occurred to our parents to teach us are problems now. Things that weren't supposed to be scary (visit Greece? Sure!) suddenly were. And things that were never supposed to be normal became commonplace. Metal detectors at national monuments? Limits to liquids you can carry on an airplane? Profiling?
It's not always where you expect it, either. When I travel and either have to or choose to use my passport, I will almost immediately be "randomly" selected for an extra search. The stamps in my passport (combined with my bachelor's degree, which could very well be part of my "official description" ... because let's face it, technology's a little nuts) mean that eyebrows are raised at this otherwise somewhat anonymous, normal-looking woman.
Ten years later, it's hard to tell what's changed because, to be honest, it seems that everything has changed. Our new normal, whatever that means, is so different than what it could have been. And now, we have the strange task of telling kids -- our kids, our friends' kids, our nieces and nephews -- what was, what might have been, and what has happened.
And where we were that day.
I was at school at 7AM that day...
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