September 11 Digital Archive

story4350.xml

Title

story4350.xml

Source

born-digital

Media Type

story

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2002-09-11

911DA Story: Story

I was home on maternity leave with my second daughter Peyton who was born on July 25. My husband had left for work and I was watching the Today show. When the first plane hit, they weren't sure exactly what happened. They thought it was a small private plane. I called my husband at work and left him a message saying "the weirdest thing just happened. A plane hit the World Trade Center."

It was shortly after I hung up that the second plane hit. I stood in front of the TV and can't even remember what I was thinking at that point. Of course, after that, it was one news flash after the other. The plane hitting the Pentagon, Flight 93, the crumbling of the towers. My eyes were riveted to the TV for hours.

During the course of the week I know I cried every day. All the people holding up pictures of loved ones, wondering if they were dead or alive, the memorial service in Washington. It was all too much to bear.

We live close to Mpls/St. Paul Airport and there wasn't a time when I couldn't hear a commerical flight taking off or landing, but there was silence for the rest of the week.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and hearing nothing but the drone of military planes passing overhead. It was a very surreal and somewhat frightening experience.


I was thinking of all the lost lives, I was wondering what the future held for my very young children. The world as I knew it would never be the same. I thought about how I would be able to raise my children in a world full of such hate and violence.

But when they are old enough to understand what happened on September 11, I will tell them and try to teach them about what a hero really is. Not a sports figure, or rock star, but every day people doing heroic acts and giving their lives so that others may live.

Citation

“story4350.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 29, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/12797.