story1053.xml

story1053.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-18

My radio clock alarm went off with a blare of noise. It was 7:30 a.m. in Chico, CA. Then I heard people crying on the radio. I heard terror and horror in their voices. "A second plane has crashed into the Twin Towers!!!" "What the...?," I thought groggily. My first thought was that someone on the radio was pulling an Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio report, and I was angry at them. The anger woke me up. I didn't hear any laughing at the joke they were pulling on us. I flew out of bed and ran downstairs, turning on CNN. The towers were in flames, people were jumping out of the building. I couldn't pull myself away. My youngest daughter, Sari, with her boyfriend, John, right behind her, came flying downstairs, yelling at me to turn on CNN. I already had. We stood there silently, our horror growing, tears running down our faces. My oldest daughter, Lucia, came running downstairs holding her 7-month-old son, Kieran. A friend had called her, telling her something horrible was happening in New York City and she needed to turn on the TV. Downstairs, she found us in front of the TV. We all stood there, Sari, John, Lucia, Kieran, and I, not believing our eyes. Then we exploded into action. Sari and Lucia tried to call their brother, Chris, who lived up the mountain. He needed to know about his Dad. They also tried to call their Dad, Wali, who was supposed to be working on the 109th floor that week, something to do with construction. John was trying to call his Dad in Wisconsin. His Dad was supposed to be on one of the top floors (I think the 104th) that Tuesday in some business meeting. Couldn't get through. Of course, we couldn't get through. I got ready for work, Sari got ready for school. But we all kept coming back to the TV, flipping through the channels from CNN to ABC to NBC to CBS to find out what was going on. We just didn't know the extent of anything. Meanwhile, everyone kept trying the phone. John was the first to find out his Dad had decided not to go that week. His Dad usually went to New York City once a week for business meetings at the Twin Towers. But something had told him not to go and so he decided to stay in Wisconsin that week. But my kids still hadn't found anything out. It had been two hours and we still couldn't get through. They tried their Aunt Mary and Uncle Rob. Rob is their father's oldest brother and the union rep for their father's local union. But no one was home. They left a message and tried their father's number again. The lines were down again. Sari and I left for work and school. I work on the California State University,Chico campus and Sari has classes at CSU,Chico. I told her I wasn't staying, just going in to let everyone know I couldn't stay. I was in shock and I knew it because I was doing irrational things like driving to work instead of calling, when part of me was shouting to myself, "Stay home and off the streets, stupid!!!" She said that she wouldn't stay also, just run into class, and let the professor know she couldn't be there today. Inside the office, no one seemed to know what had happened. I mentioned that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had been attacked. Only one person there had heard the news before she had left home for work. But the others could see my face. I told my boss that I would not be staying and I mentioned to everyone there, including the customers (two independent archaeologists and one California Department of Fire and Forestry archaeologist) that everyone should go home today and stay glued to the TV. Something very horrible and very historic was happening to our country. And that they should all be at home off the streets in case the emergency vehicles needed the roads. We were bystanders and the best place for all of us were at home. But they only looked at me as if I was overreacting. And I didn't care. Perhaps they didn't have any family in New York, so what was happening was remote to them, but it was not remote to me. I had lived in NYC for years, I remembered my kids' dad working on the twin towers in 1972. I remembered the twin towers when they were new and now they had tumbled down. It was too horrible for words. All those people, in the buildings, in the planes. It was too hard to talk about, so I said goodbye, picked up Sari, and went home. By then it was 11 a.m. California time, 2 p.m. in New York. As I was leaving, the coordinator for my office came in and told my boss, the assistant coordinator, that she should close the office and go home, and he told the customers that they should also consider going home and staying off the streets until we all found out what was going on. Apparently, the campus administrators had closed the school and told everyone to go home and stay off the streets. So, some people in California were taking it seriously after all.

Sari and I went home. Everyone was huddled around the TV, using the phone every few minutes to try and get through. We felt all alone in our suffering. Then we went outside the apartment and everyone else began to come out and congregate in the courtyard, looking stunned. We spent a lot of time outside, all of us, talking, being together, but leaving the tvs on. Every now and then someone would run into their apartment to get an update. So many people in that complex had people in New York. We were all so far away and could do nothing. It was cathartic to share our fears, our sorrow, our helplessness, our shock with others. Finally, in the afternoon, Wali calls. He's alright. His crew was supposed to be there, but they got called off the job and posted to another job a few blocks away for that week. He and his crew had been in the twin towers the week before. But another metal lathers' crew had been sent instead of his crew, and Wali was in shock and sorrow for the men and women he thought had been killed. It had taken him all day to get home. He had walked out of the chaos, and kept walking until he could find transportation to his apartment on Cabrini Boulevard, located at the other end of Manhattan Island from the Twin Towers. He found out later that the other crew had made it out. It was unbelievable! Yet it still hurt that others had died instead. Other family members in New York were also okay. No one we knew was there. Or so we thought. Several days later Lucia finds out that one of her friends, Amy, was across the street from the towers when the second plane hit and the blast threw her back into the building behind her. She was there with the coroner's office to help. She came away bruised and shaken, but she lived! I stayed in front of the TV late into the night. It was hard to sleep. I couldn't get the images of people jumping to their deaths to avoid the greater pain inside the building. A choice, a hard choice, a choice that left no options for life, only a choice to avoid the greater pain of the moment. A choice I hoped I would never have to make. And I was afraid of having to wake up again to something horrific. It took several months for the fear of this to go away. To this day, almost a year later, it is hard for me to think about last September 11. I still cry at all that pain that people in New York, Washington, DC, and on the planes endured, and the ones left behind that are still enduring. And I worry about my family flying back and forth from New York to California, and vice versa.