story1357.xml

story1357.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-21

I make scrapbooks of holidays, everyday events in our lives, etc. This is the text that I wrote to include in my scrapbook to make note of September 11th, 2001. Text was originally written on March 11th, 2002.

The morning of the attack, Tom, my husband, was working in Reading, PA, doing an audit at Godiva (a subsidiary of Campbell?s). As per the norm when he travels, I fell asleep with the TV on. I was home, still sleeping as I was not working yet, & having the most bizarre dream about Tom & me hiding in a FEDEX truck to avoid bombs. I woke up, listening to the Today show & hearing Katie Couric talking about an apparent terrorist attack, thinking that she was speaking about somewhere in the Middle East (I was still trying to recover from my dream), but I was curious, so I put my glasses on & looked to see what was going on. Then my jaw dropped as I saw smoke plumes coming from the Twin Towers & heard what happened?two jets hit each tower, & no sooner did I begin to absorb that did the next plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

Seemingly, just as soon as I caught my breath (around 9:45 am), Tom called. Never had I been so happy that he worked for a boring, stable food company! He called to see if I knew what was going on (he knows my propensity for sleeping late), & the stream of expletives that came out of my mouth gave him his answer.

I wound up on the phone all day, touching base with friends & family to assure them of both of our safety as well as checking to make sure everyone was accounted for. It was a day of reaching out & touching someone all the way around (even if no fences were mended), & I spent the next couple days sucked into watching the news coverage & trying to figure out how I could help. Not by simply writing out a check ? plenty of people were doing that in droves ? but what I could actually participate in.

While listening to the radio, I heard that a WYSP in Philadelphia & their sister companies were coordinating a collection drive for Friday, September 14th. So, I went to the grocery store & took advantage of sales of non-perishables, such as NutriGrain Bars, & liquid soap & toiletries & all sorts of other items requested. I also cleaned out my closet & took out unused bandage supplies that I had tucked away.

The donation drive was amazing. There were hundreds of people who came to drop off checks & supplies. People who came down to donate just didn?t want to leave! There were moving vans that were being loaded with supplies & driven directly up the NJ Turnpike into New York City (since no cars could get into the city) & the people who brought things to donate wound up overtaking the volunteers & filling trucks! I was there for an hour & five trucks were filled & heading up for the rescuers.

I had a really hard time being alone that week. Every noise outside would make me jump, & there were sirens constantly (unusual with living in Marlton, NJ). On Wednesday night, I was chatting online around midnight with my friend Brian, who was a bit freaked out himself. He had just moved to NJ five months before. We were both alone & extremely jumpy, so I invited him to come down. We wound up drinking large amounts of alcohol & having a sleepover in our living room, & it was completely comforting. Tom came home on Friday, bearing a one-pound box of Godiva, pronouncing that he knew that I had a hard week on my own.

I decided to concentrate on a different side of the tragedy than many folks did in their scrapbooks. There will be photographs & reproductions of news stories about September 11th for years to come. We live in a different world now, with heightened personal security in public places & a nation?s innocence lost. A documentary that started out about firefighters was shown on television last night where two filmmakers were inadvertently filming the events of the day as part of the original plan for the film. Some people thought such a film was distasteful. It was hard to watch, but I felt that it was necessary to watch. I *wanted* to feel the stab in my heart every time they showed the plane pierce the building, & I *wanted* to cringe at the ?thud? noise of people who chose that it would be better to jump from the towers than burn to death....because it reminds me of the horrific choices that some people in this world made, & why we, as a nation, need to be engaged in the war in which our soldiers are currently fighting. The documentary was done far more tastefully than I was expecting.

~Kim, age 32