story942.xml

story942.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-07-29

I've never felt so far away or so helpless . . .

I'm British by birth, but I moved to Washington, DC when I was about 18 and settled there for the next 17 years. I married an American and had two lovely daughters. Then the opportunity to work in the UK came up, and we took it. Watched capable moving men carefully wrap my furniture and pack it into a container, found a house in a pretty English village, piled onto a plane and began our new lives here. That was in October 2000.

Almost a year later, I was having lunch with two work colleagues. It was a glorious day . . . bright sunshine, clear blue skies. We had a lovely meal at a nearby seafood restaurant . . . clam chowder, mussels and a bottle or two of Sancerre (amazing the things you remember). On the drive back, my cell phone rang . . . it was a former colleague and friend in the States . . . she had a series of strange coincidences to tell me about a mutual friend of ours, and while we we were chatting she said . . . "oh, and by the way a plane flew into the World Trade Center this morning." Just like that. No horror. No fear. Just . . . wow! We assumed (like almost everyone who wasn't there and didn't actually see it) that it was a light aircraft. We laughed about our mutual friend . . . ended the conversation with a promise to talk some time the following week and hung up. Ten minutes later she called me back . . . this time her voice was strained . . . and we were both frightened . . . another plane had hit the second tower . . . it was as though the world slipped suddenly sideways . . . as if the ground had just shifted under all our feet.

We had just pulled into the parking lot . . . I practically sprinted into the building and up to our office so that I could log onto CNN and see what was going on. We have family and friends in both New York and Washington . . . I had to make sure my "familiars" were alright.

My laptop desktop was bristling with IM chatter . . . friends on both sides of the Atlantic were frantically trying to get my attention to tell me what was going on. My brother (in Charlottesville) was clearly frightened . . . a plane was circling the White House, a plane had crashed on the Mall, a plane had crashed into the Pentagon . . .

I tried to reach our families . . . I got through briefly to my mother-in-law, but we were cut off and after that all the circuits were busy. I called my husband and told him to turn the television at home to CNN.

The news kept coming . . . Tower 2 had collapsed. People were jumping. I still hadn't seen a single image, but I felt overwhelmingly frightened . . . attacked, under siege. Then my boss said something chilling . . . "they hijacked airliners . . . with people on them."

The rest of the day is a blur. I sat there at my desk unable to function. At about four o'clock I went home . . . I cried all the way home, cried and sang America the Beautiful. George, my husband, and I watched the BBC and CNN coverage until late into the night . . . sobbing, frightened.

For weeks/months we cried. I think I cried every day for four months straight. Silly things set me off. We bought a flag. I went to the American embassy in London to sign the condolence book and wept in the arms of a U.S. Navy Captain. An Afghani man came up to me, weeping too, and apologized over and over again. The sea of flowers around the memorial to Roosevelt . . . the flag . . . the Marine honour guard . . . the lone piper who showed up and played Amazing Grace and then left.

And then I came home . . . briefly . . . in December to bring my stepson back to the UK to spend Christmas with us. I was sideswiped by the deluge of emotion I felt as the plane touched down at Dulles . . . and when I walked into the Immigration hall and saw the enormous flag and the words "Welcome to the United States of America" I broke down again. I stood there for a long while with my hand on my heart just looking at that flag.

September 11th for me, though, was the day I realized how much I do love the States . . . until that day I'd have told you I didn't HAVE a home. I'd lived somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic for so long . . . not coming from or belonging to either place . . . the UK or the States. What a fool I was and what a pity that it took something so wicked to show me otherwise . . . I have two homes. How lucky I am . . . and how lucky we all were, our families and friends, to emerge intact . . . at least physically.