nmah6433.xml

nmah6433.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-02-08

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. On September 11, 2001, at 6:38 a.m. Pacific time (9:38 where all of this was happening) our phone rang. I have lived with my grandmother since my grandfather died in 1994. A phone call at that time of the morning is always bad news in my family. My grandmother picked it up on the 2nd ring, and I heard her say "That's terrible--here she is," and she was in the doorway of my room handing me the phone. I was already sitting up in bed and reaching for it--I grabbed it and said "What?" It was my mom, who lives across town.
She sounded breathless and her voice was a little higher than normal: "Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and then they bombed the Pentagon." I said "Bombed what?" (because I couldn't believe it). She started to sob a little "The Pentagon." At that, I was out of bed and running to the television in the livingroom.
My niece was staying with my mom while she waited to move to New York to join her fiance, Tony. Tony was watching from the top of a building where he works and had called her on her cell phone and told her to turn on the news, a plane had hit the North Tower. She was watching and yelling Oh My God!--which woke my mom. They were both watching the news with Tony still on the phone when the second plane hit. They knew immediately it was no accident; after the third plane hit the Pentagon, they decided they should wake people.

I watched the news and remember I kept saying to my mother "Do you know what this means? Do you know what this means?" Because somehow I knew instantly that this was from the Middle East and that in short order we would be at war somewhere, and that this battle would last for years and years. I watched the news while I got ready for work (weird--it never occurred to me NOT to go to work). I called my boss to ask him "Where are our guys? In relation to these buildings?" I meant our bankers, and the analysts who cover our company. I named firms: Deutsche Bank, CIBC, Lehman Brothers. He said right there, right by those towers. He asked if I was going to work. I said of course. He said he would meet me there. We just watched news all day, no work happened (everyone we would be working WITH was outrunning those collapsing buildings or trying to get home). Late in the day one of our bankers called and said his team was okay, they had outrun it, he was walking all the way home, he was calling from a bridge. I thought it odd that of all people, he called my boss on the other side of the country. I don't know if he just called everyone he knew that day, or if he was in shock, or if long distance was the only service he could get at the time. (I've never asked; he came out for a meeting a week later and his eyes were too bright and his foot never stopped tapping.) We stayed at the office until just about time for the President's address, then went home to watch it. I cried off and on all day. I slept with the television on in my room, and remember that I woke regularly during the night to look and see if anything else had happened. I watch the news every morning, ever since.

A lot of people in New York think that we were not affected by that day; that we were not traumatized; that we don't know how terrible it was; that we tired of hearing about it in a year. That's not true. The press gave that impression, and the press decided when we would stop hearing about it. We were traumatized; we were neighbors that day; this country became much smaller, in an instant. The distance between Las Vegas and New York became about one block, as far as we were concerned. It was unbelievable, and yet it was inevitable. How did I know, that morning, instantly, who had done this? Looking back, I think it's because there were hundreds of clues pointing to this, in news stories going back years. It's been a long time coming. On September 10 on my local news radio there was a blurb about a high risk of a terrorist attack on US concerns in Asia, probably Japan. I think those sorts of stories and tidbits get filed away somewhere in your head and it all comes together when something like 9-11 happens. I don't blame the government--foreign policy and foreign relations and intel is not as easy as the 3 or 4 lines coming from a pundit's mouth on CNN. Our biggest disadvantages as a country are that we can't conceive of doing something like that to other people, so we never really believed it would happen to us. And that the enemy figured out all he has to do is use our virtues against us.

My life has changed, I think everyone's has. Even people who say it hasn't; we'll never feel quite so secure again. I know that I have tired of political correctness at the cost of safety; I really don't care if people are offended--if they fit the profile, I want them checked out. (If Irish girls had highjacked the plane, I would expect life to be a bit tougher for me and that I might be thoroughly searched before boarding a plane.) I have tired of the rosie outlook that got us here. It would be great if life were like the visions held by these idealists---but it's not, and it's frustrating to have known that eventually this would happen while they are so surprised. Life just isn't that way, and there will always be groups of people who hate other people and you have to be prepared to deal with that, not wish it away. I think the other thing that changed is that I'm more focused on things that really matter (my family, my friends, my time alone in beautiful places). I saw a lot of that in other people for a while, but they seem to have gotten over that, too. That part is a shame.

What should be remembered about September 11th is that we were unprepared. We were unprepared, we were soft, we were unaware as a nation and that cost the lives of thousands of people. Not our culture, not our dominance in the world. I'm one of those who do NOT believe that because we are Americans we are bad. My culture is superior to a lot of other cultures out there (we don't castrate our pre-teen daughters, for one thing). What happened to us on September 11 was our fault only in the respect that we refused to see it coming and tried to wish it better, instead of dealing with it head on. What should be remembered is all the people who did their best that day---professional police officers, fire and rescue, even though they were petrified; office workers who tried to help each other when a sunny, routine Tuesday morning became something unreal; passengers on a plane who took a vote to try to control their destiny, even if they might not survive--all those people are heroes because they behaved well in horrible circumstances. You don't have to leap tall buildings to be a hero--just face fear and behave as well as you can in spite of it.

I absolutely flew the flag after 9-11. But I had flown it before. The flag has always symbolized what is good about this country; the fact that even in Las Vegas people lined up to donate blood from their bodies, for people they would never know, on the other side of the country (worst tragedy of all, there was no-one to donate it to). Because flags have always identified members of a tribe, and no matter what ethinicity or religion we are, as Americans we are one tribe and that flag is our umbrella.
There is not enough space here to say what September 11th was and is and will be; it's still too big to really absorb. I'm glad it's being documented now, while it's still fresh. I hope a lot of people have kept journals of their own. One more thing: May God truly bless all those people who perished, and help those they left behind.