Sober memories.….…
Sep. 11th, 2009 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaEight years ago this morning, as I brushed my teeth while watching the morning news, a jet struck the second tower of the WTC.
I dropped my toothbrush, & stood there slack jawwed, incredulous
& numb.
I got dressed, & just before I walked out the door, the second tower crumbled. The enormity of it boggled my mind. I had grown up watching the towers being built. They were one of the few landmarks that could be seen from almost anywhere in Brooklyn, even from my neighborhood which was the furthest one away. As I drove to work the radio blared with minute by minute reports of attack on the WTC, the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania.
I was thinking about my sister and her husband, so grateful they had moved to New Jersey. For years they had lived directly across the street from the Trade Center. It so happens that the towers had come straight down and the apartment complex were not crushed, not that that was clear in the news reports.
Then it hit me. Joan & Ian lived in NJ, but commuted back into Manhattan daily for work, changing trains at the base of the towers. They might easily have been at ground zero at the time the towers were hit.
I became frantic. It was impossible to get a phone call through to anywhere in the greater NY area. It was 5 hours before I succeeded in getting anyone on the phone. It was my mother, who was in central NJ. Both Joan and Ian were fine. Ian had gone in early, so was already at his office in midtown. Joan had run several errands first and had been driving in. Traffic had come to a stand still; it took her 4 hours to get home, a trip that should have taken 45 minutes from where she was. Ian was trapped in Manhattan for 2 days
I dropped my toothbrush, & stood there slack jawwed, incredulous
& numb.
I got dressed, & just before I walked out the door, the second tower crumbled. The enormity of it boggled my mind. I had grown up watching the towers being built. They were one of the few landmarks that could be seen from almost anywhere in Brooklyn, even from my neighborhood which was the furthest one away. As I drove to work the radio blared with minute by minute reports of attack on the WTC, the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania.
I was thinking about my sister and her husband, so grateful they had moved to New Jersey. For years they had lived directly across the street from the Trade Center. It so happens that the towers had come straight down and the apartment complex were not crushed, not that that was clear in the news reports.
Then it hit me. Joan & Ian lived in NJ, but commuted back into Manhattan daily for work, changing trains at the base of the towers. They might easily have been at ground zero at the time the towers were hit.
I became frantic. It was impossible to get a phone call through to anywhere in the greater NY area. It was 5 hours before I succeeded in getting anyone on the phone. It was my mother, who was in central NJ. Both Joan and Ian were fine. Ian had gone in early, so was already at his office in midtown. Joan had run several errands first and had been driving in. Traffic had come to a stand still; it took her 4 hours to get home, a trip that should have taken 45 minutes from where she was. Ian was trapped in Manhattan for 2 days
