nmah4408.xml

nmah4408.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I was blissfully unaware that history was unfolding until about 10:00 AM Eastern time that morning. I had just logged on to the Internet and was visiting a discussion forum that I was a co-moderator of at the time, and the first discussion I saw was called "The World Trade Centers."

I clicked on it and read with horror that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I immediately turned the TV on and tuned in to CNN... and I don't have to tell you what I saw. I was glued to the TV for the entire day. I remember at one point in the early afternoon, I stepped outside to have a cigarette and I burst into tears while I was sitting there.

And then I had to pick up my son from school. He was 6 years old at the time, and I had no idea how I was going to explain what happened. I reminded him of how we had gone to see the Statue of Liberty the summer before, and asked if he remembered seeing the two tall buildings across the river. When he said yes, I told him that the towers had fallen that day. His response was, "Well, why don't they just re-build them?"

I found that really touching for some reason. I thought, how wonderful it would be able to view the day's events from a child's perspective and not realize the horror of what had transpired.

This morning we talked about it again. We observed a moment of silence together and then I explained again what had happened that morning. This time I think he understood it a bit better, and it felt awful to come to that realization.