story6340.xml

story6340.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I'll never forget where or what I was doing on that September 11th day of 2001. I was driving to Indianapolis Indiana for a special meeting with an association I am involved with. It was like any other trip I make that way, I actually look forward to those days because I travel by myself and it is a time when I am actually left alone with my thoughts and I don't have to share the radio or Cd player with anyone. Being a mother of a one year old usually there were Barny songs on the radio.
I was ready to go- I had my collection of cd's to listen to, turned off my cell phone for the 2 hour trip and was on the road about 7:45am for my comute.
It was a beautiful morning I had the sunroof open. I was listining to the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack singing along and ironically enough I had this feeling that I needed to turn on the radio. (Which I never do because with the drive up to Indy you go thru several different stations. It is hard for me find one station that I can listen to because they are usually locals giving farm reports, who was arrested and so forth.) As I was listening to a local favorite Bob and Tom the reports were coming in I couldn't tell if it was for real or not because those two are famous for all their skits they do on the radio. I began turning the stations and that was all that was being reported. I remember still not beliving this was happening. I reached over turned on my cell phone and had missed several calls from my office, family, and friends. I called my Dad and asked him if this is really happening and he told me yes, just as that was said the Pentagon was being hit. Here I am half way between my hometown and the business meeting I needed to attend driving down a stretch of highway that was surrounded by nothing but cornfields. Mind you Indianapolis is only 120 miles away from where I live but as I was driving and this was unfolding you couldn't convience me that I wasn't 10,000 miles away. All I wanted to do was turn my car around and head straight to the babysitters house and get my son, but I also no longer wanted to be alone. I had a sudden urge to get somewhere that I knew people. I was closer to Indy now than I was home. As I am driving all I can think of is how erie this feels to be all alone after I had looked so forward to being alone. I would watch the sky and notice there were not any planes around and when I would see one it was a small prop plane. The thoughts of the movie Red Dawn kept kreeping into my mind. We were under attack. What was this going to mean for my son? This has forever changed the way he would be raised and the life I had hoped he would have. I just began to cry- I knew life would never be the same- That security will be be gone forever he will never have even known what we just lost. I finally made it to Indianapolis after calling everyone back and ensuring them I was okay and I would be fine in Indy. My mother was just beside herself when she found out I was out of town.
I walked into the conference room and everyone one in there were sitting in silence and watching the news. Finally someone said we have to turn this off.
"We have to turn this off" if it were only so easy. I'll never forget those word. I remeber thinking yes we have to keep going on about our business but was so torn inside about how could we discuss plans about a golf scrambe while this was going on; it seened so frivilous now- but two days before it was end all be all to get this all finailzed. We conducted the meeting like any other and not another word was "said" about what was happening in our country until the meeting was over and we were served lunch. I remember making a note to look at the gas prices as I pulled into the meeting at 10am that morning, as I left the meeting at noon it had gone from $1.29 to over $2.00 I thought here we go. When I got to my home town around 3:30 the gas prices were so spuratic some places were still $1.29 while others were over $5.00 a gallon just a few mile down the road.
I finally got a hold of my husband who is a middle school teacher and coach to touch base and see how things were at the school. I think most parents felt the same as we both did, all we wanted to do was get our family all together and feel safe again. I ran picked up our son and we met over at my husbands parents home with the rest of the family coming in shortly after. We all sat together waiting, all feeling the same feelings but all also having very different feelings all at the sametime. This being a family of all educators and mostly history teachers at that- there were many hindsights to be told and many different theorys as to how handle this situation. The one common thing we all had was that we couldn't wait to see and hear our President address "us". We all sat feeling very proud as we watch this horror hundreds of miles away. We felt somewhat of a sigh of relief as we listened and waited for our president to lead us through unchartered time.
I remember going home that night and having our son go to bed with us that night sleeping between the two of us somehow thinging this felt safe- but still with the television on afraid to fall asleep but just the same afraid to wake up and find more dispair.
Now one year later I seem to more bothered by this than before which seems strange I know but we have had time to take all of this in and realize the signficance of whaat has occured in our Great Nation- I couln't be more proud to be an American now than ever before.