nmah6498.xml

nmah6498.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-04-13

Austin, TX. I prepared to enter the computer classroom but spent the few minutes before class, eating breakfast in front of my computer screen doing what I usually did when I had time to surf the internet. I was reading the headlines on Foxnews.com when the first pictures began displaying. They renewed every few minutes with a new blurb about how these planes flew into the World Trade Center. I walked into the classroom and told our instructor, my friend who was raised on Long Island. She looked at me in disbelief; you can't fly over the WTC, so how could a plane fly into it?
Nine days earlier, my then-boyfriend and I permanently moved his belongings from Woodbridge NJ to Austin for his new job. He had been laid off from his job in Manhattan months earlier. Before we left the northeast, we'd had our last visit to Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, having taken the train from Woodbridge NJ to Penn Station. Some of his friends worked in and around the WTC, not to mention his family who lived and worked around the city.
When it was apparent everything we'd known about life vanished - security, trust, living - was gone. Now everyone and everything was suspect. My boyfriend got through to me at work and instructed me to go home to our apartment, stay inside and he'd be along. I left immediately. Some at my work remained, stunned but still thinking that, in Austin TX, no harm would come to us. It was only after I'd left to go home that the University of Texas closed classes. President Bush's daughter attended the school and if terrorists were after our president, they'd be certain to find his daughter. It was then the Governor closed offices for the day.
In front of my TV set, shaken but unmoveable, I watched every television station channel seeing the incredible reporting from every angle of the WTC, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania - all those planes, all those people, those family members, my fellow Americans... people who would never be able to tell us what life and death are life firsthand. I cried. For days after September 11, I cried. I remained at home, stood out in the sunshine but heard no planes overhead for all the airports were closed. I felt the warmth of the Texas sun but wondered when I was next. Where would we be safe? We could we go? and how could I leave to find safety if my mother wasn't with me?
Besides my own father's death 4 months earlier, September 11th remains the most important day of my life.

My life has changed incredibly. I married my then-boyfriend two years later. His family and friends live in New Jersey but for many of them, their lives were spent working in Manhattan. Though we are Christian and have relatively little fear of dying, we are afraid to witness again - perhaps firsthand - terrorism. Going to New Jersey from Texas has relative little risk, but leaving New Jersey gives thought as to who is on the plane with us. Are they people looking to spread fear and violence to this plane, or to my home state? I am more suspicious now. Not of only "foreigners" but anyone who might think to raise his voice in a calm atmosphere. I am at the ready to extinguish any sign of trouble now. I want to defend my fellow man now. I am ready. And now, because I have said that, I am sure someone reading this thinks "this girl is nuts". Had we each been more cautious, insightful, and quick to respond, we could have somehow prevented September 11th, but who wants to live their lives in such fear?

I think every event in history is remembered for the lives that were lost or the damage inflicted or the incredible violence. For most of us, those events happened to other people, in other places, some other time. For most of us, we will never firsthand experience a September 11th even if we live to be old. But each generation has experienced something as unique and terrifying as September 11th. We should be prepared - somehow - to respond to these events with courage, vigor, compassion, and STOP THINKING THIS CAN'T HAPPEN TO ME.

Yes. I only recently (2004) stopped wearing my American flag pin on my lapel. It has been, literally, through the wash(ing machine) and needs to be replaced. The American flag is a larger symbol of those of us who live here. I am proud to be Here, to be in America, to be American, NOT because I think we are better here than anywhere else in the world. But because I have been fortunate to have gained an education, practiced my religion freely, and all those other things that America has allowed me to do so that I might be able to give that to another.
Whatever anger I feel about September 11th - who did this, why, how can I stop it from happening again - is turned loose so that I might focus on serving my God's people while I have breath in me.