9/11 - Where were you?

Amy just asked and answered, "Where were you?"

My children and I were at a school building the morning of 9/11.

My daughter (the one with an autism diagnosis) was in early intervention. The sibs were in child care in the building so that I could watch and participate in the early intervention.

The building secretary rushed into the room and announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. One of the early intervention teachers was a wreck. Her adult son was working the polls in New York City near the World Trade Center. (9/11 was a Tuesday, an election day; it must have been a state primary election.) We headed down the hall to the staff lounge to watch news coverage on a TV there. The early intervention teacher tried to phone her son's cell phone. No answer. We watched as another plane flew into the building. The teacher phoned her son again and again. No answer. Except for the teacher who was trying to reach her son in New York City, we were still and silent.

I was horrified. Scared. Not sure what might happen next.

Our early intervention session ended. I loaded the children into the car, strapped them into their car seats, took them straight home. I found our little, old, black-and-white tv and plugged it into an outlet in the kitchen, turned it to one of the few stations I could get with an antenna, and plopped the children down in front of their favorite videos, and I kept one ear/eye on the little tv in the kitchen while I snuggled with my children.

The plane intended for the White House, or maybe the pentagon, crashed.

The world waited until every plane in U.S. air space was safely on the ground and we breathed a collective sigh of, well, not relief, exactly. I think we all knew our world had just changed in a big way.

I was thankful that my husband was not out of state on a business trip. He was home.

I remember the silence, especially at night, when air travel stopped in the United States for several days. Seems like everyone went home and stayed quiet, which illuminated the silence in the sky. The days immediately following 9/11 were so somber.

I still can't wrap my mind around the hatred that prompted it all. We are all flesh and blood, human beings, walking this earth together. We're more alike than different.

Where were you on 9/11?

PS: The son of the early intervention teacher was *fine*. :) The teacher had a long day to wait to hear from her son, though. If I remember correctly, it was late afternoon before mother and son were able to talk to one another that day.