nmah6328.xml

nmah6328.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-10-11

September 11 started for me with an early morning phone call in Houston. My husband and I had decided to sleep in after a rare night out the night before and my first class (I was in the second year of graduate school) didn't start until 11:30. It was a few minutes after the second plane had hit when the phone rang, and I knew something was wrong as soon as I heard it was my mother. The first thing she said was "do you remember what building your father works in?" to which my response was "What, again!?" My father had been in WTC in 1993 the first time it was attacked. When she told me that two planes had hit the towers, I immediately thought of small planes like cessnas had hit. I went to turn on the TV the first image that came up was the second plane hitting. I thought "oh my god, oh my god" over and over again". I couldn't remember where my father's office was exactly, so I told my mother I would look it up and call her back, since my father's cell phone wasn't picking up. When I saw that one of his firm's offices was located in the World Financial Center, I called the other office (since at the time I didn't know there was a difference) and tried calmly to ask to be transferred to his line (the direct line wasn't working). I feel bad for the poor operator who was handling calls that day, she must have gotten so many calls from people like me who knew little about the financial district other than loved ones worked there. She explained that his building was accross the street from WTC, and that the firm had been evacuated and everyone who was in the office accounted for.

At that point I felt a bit of relief, but since my dad could have easily been seeing some of the many clients he had, and I still could not find him, had me very worried. It was almost midnight in 1993 when we finally found him. Not knowing what else to do, I started getting ready to leave for school, with my husband driving because he could tell I was trying very hard not to completely freak out. As we were leaving, I watched as the first tower collapsed, but my husband kept saying I couldn't see it because of the smoke, that was all. In the car, they broke in to the news that had broken into regular programming to announce the second tower had fell.

School was a mess. One of my professors asked if I was okay and I told him where my father worked and we couldn't find him. Some of the less enlightened of the professors were in the hall arguing about which ethnic group was responsible. Most of people's efforts were dedicated to trying to get to the CNN website since there were no TVs in the department. I remember wandering down the hallways, asking to borrow someone's cell phone to try my dad's line again. About that time someone said they had heard almost no cell phones were working in the NYC area. All I could do then was wait, ad leave messages on his home number.

Classes were cancelled, and my professor drove me home. It was about noon Central time at that point, and my husband was sitting watching tv and fielding calls from my mother. I didn't think that I could stand waiting so long again to find out what happened. I would feel terribly guilty and selfish about this in the days to follow, as the missing posters went up. I was lucky - about 1:30 my dad got through to tell me he was okay, that he was at a client meeting in New Jersey at the time. Only later did I find out that he was there because he was running behind for his meeting at the WTC. I don't remember doing anything else that day, but watching television until early the next morning, trying to make some sense of it all.

Part of me is still waiting. In the days following, it was as if we were all waiting for the "other shoe to drop" - for more attacks to come. I don't feel that another attack is imminent anymore, but I wonder when it will be. I also am now somewhat relieved when the first thing I see when I turn on the TV is commercials. They've almost become a sign of normalcy.

That people went out of their way to help others. Like people going to the airports and offering help to all of the people stranded. But I also think that some of the ugliness that happened should be remembered as well, like the rumor that started on campus that middle eastern students had run out of class cheering when they heard about the attacks.

I didn't fly a flag. I honestly didn't understand the patriotism reaction at the time, and the fact that this was an act of war took some time to sink in.