I was at home, having just gotten out of the shower and begun preparing for my day. The phone rang. It was Sweet W, who was working the 6 AM to 2:30 shift at that time and thus already at work. “Turn on the TV!” he said. “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”
So I was watching the TV when the second plane crashed, and I could not do anything else all day. I tried to work – I was freelancing from home then – but I could not look away from the TV. It was so unspeakably horrifying. I felt sick, and weepy, and furious, and sad. And I remember: we did not know what else was coming. These were simultaneous attacks. So mixed in with the sorrow and anger for the victims in New York, DC, and Pennsylvania were fear and dread of which U.S. city would be attacked next. The world, as I knew it, was irrevocably changed.
At that point, Sweet W and I were only a few weeks away from our wedding. We had friends who had just gotten married on September 8 in the Midwest, and their honeymoon flight was supposed to take off on the 11th. Since all flights were grounded, they spent their honeymoon trying to get a rental car to drive back home to the Bay Area. We talked briefly about postponing our wedding, but then decided that whatever the hell happened, we wanted to be married. We did end up putting off our honeymoon to Hawaii, and we still haven’t gotten there. But that is neither here nor there.
What a day. I am still so sad.
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