nmah5342.xml

nmah5342.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-12-19

My husband called me early on the morning of September 11th to tell me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought he was talking about a small plane , perhaps a small comuter plane. I did not think much of it. I work at one of the museums on the Mall in Washington, D.C. As I entered the hallway near my office, colleagues were clustered around a tv, frozen in shock. One woman was crying and shaking. No one knew what to do. We heard that the State Department had been hit and then the Pentagon. I have small children, who were in school in nearby Alexandria, Virginia. At that moment my mother instincts took over and I raced to my car to get our of D.C. and back to Alexandria to pick up my children. Traffic was dreadful it was very difficult to get out of the city. I managed to make it across the 14th street bridge before they shut it down. People on foot were making their way across the bridge as well. As I passed the Pentagon on my right, great clouds of acrid black smoke were billowing out of the building. I made it to school, picked up my children and headed home where we waited for my husband to arrive. After viewing the news briefly I turned it off. It was too gastly. My children were frightened.

I have begun to consider what being an American is about and how we are perceived by other peoples. It came as a great shock to me that we could be hated so much. I love to travel am curious by nature and love to experience other cultures. I never imagined that others could feel so hostile towards the United States. My youngest child developed an anxiety problem and a preoccupation with death. For 14 months he was not able to sleep through the night and woke up with night terrors. This has finally passed. However, terrorism is now something my small children think about and worry about. We are certainly no longer as complacent about our security as we used to be.

I think the world should remember the innocent people who jumped to their deaths, burnt to death, died trying to save others, those whose lives are now maimed and hurt. The senselessness of it fills me with grief. I hope that people everywhere realize that violence only breeds violence.

Yes, we did fly our flag. I felt happy to do so. In the past, if I flew our flag , even on patriotic holidays, I always felt that somehow I was not really supposed to do it. I had a weird feeling that for an American to show patriotism was considered taboo. I no longer feel that way and fly my flag proudly and with pleasure.