Remembering

[msmemory_archive]

My parents' generation had Kennedy's assassination as a defining moment. "Where were you?" was a common question, to tie folks together in sharing how they learned of it. (I remember I was very small indeed, and the milkman brought some news to Mother that upset her terribly; she dropped to the chair in the kitchen and hid her face in her apron. Only later did I figure out from the timing what it must have been.)

Where was I three years ago?

I was driving to work, had just decided to cut across Smith St. to go around a knot of traffic at Trapelo and 128.

The announcer came on the radio, and said that someone had just flown a plane into the World Trade Center. "What a nut!" I thought, figuring it was somebody in a private two-seater who thought he would give his girl a fright and miscalculated. Then I found out the truth.

When I got to work, we did nothing all morning but try to catch news. Radio, of course, since the Internet was congested to the point of unusable. Then someone remembered there was a little b&w television in the lab, used by the machinists to illicitly track the ballgames. That got moved into the kitchen, where at least most of us could keep checking in.

I remember talking with KG. He was being horrified by the jumpers. My view was, I didn't know whether I could choose between staying and burning to death, or jumping. At least if one jumped, there was a chance of being unconscious at the time of death. At the time, it didn't occur to us that the towers would come down, annulling the choice.

After work, I did the only thing I could: I hung out our flag. Wasn't eligible to give blood (previous donation was too recent). Prayed, of course, and cried. Watched the news coverage over and over, as if I could numb myself. Thought perhaps we'd get good news eventually, as we did when some of the trapped were found in the Murrah building. Cried some more.

Comments

[silme.livejournal.com]

Teaching in England at an international school (also a boarding school) in Surrey. School had just ended and the yearbook kids were in my room, fighting over a theme. My then fiance, now my husband, my reason for moving to the UK, sent me a text message telling me a plane had hit the WTC and to go online to CNN. Whilst the kids fought, another student and I went online (I had about six computers in the classroom, all hooked up to the Internet). We couldn't get into CNN, but we saw the photo... We thought it was a joke until another teacher told me she had Channel 4 on in her room next door (I didn't have a TV in my room, she did), so we all went over there... I gave out a lot of tissues; I remember running back to my classroom for the box of tissues.

It was a boarding school, and I was on duty that night till 10.30 PM. My job that evening was to go to the girls' dorms and make sure the students on independent study in their rooms were doing that. That night, no one was studying, of course. I was a counselor, going from room to room. Half the boarders were American -- some were the children of rich kids whose parents sent them abroad. Others were the children of parents whose international corporations sent them all over the world, and the companies were footing the bill. The rest were from everywhere from Sweden to Brazil to China. And they were all upset. A girl from Nigeria knew that her parents had an appoinment in the WTC that morning. But because of the problems with the phone lines, she wasn't able to reach them -- nor could they reach her -- for two days. She actually was studying that night, trying to take her mind off of it all.

I was too young when JFK died to understand it all. My siblings were in junior high and high school, and they did. When RFK died, I got it. My sister and I went to see the funeral train as it went through Philadelphia. I've been with students watching Challenger explode on TV, watching Columbine, then watching what happened three years ago.

Btw, 11 September is my husband's birthday.