My 9/11 Story
Ten years ago today, I awoke in New York to an answering machine’s beep. I was visiting the city, staying with a friend, and I was still sleeping off the previous evening’s drinks while she had gone to work. Then the answering machine started talking, and it was talking to me: it was my friend calling, saying there’s been some kind of terrorist event, don’t go out without checking the news.
Without other details, my sleepy mind jumped to thoughts of the Sarin gas attacks that had been made on Tokyo subways several years prior, and I wondered if there had been a similar attack in New York. I got up and turned on New York One, and got my first look at what was actually happening.
I called my friend back. She worked up in the Bronx, and at that point, around 9 AM, she wasn’t planning on leaving work. After the second plane hit, I think that’s when she changed her mind. Only, the subways stopped running, and she was going to have to walk back. She started her trek, and we were on the phone together many times that morning. Using the landline at her apartment, I served as a dispatcher between her and her family, who also lived in the city, but who she wasn’t able to get cell-to-cell phone calls through to.
Her apartment was in Chelsea, about 2 miles from the World Trade Center. There were sirens outside, but little else at that point to indicate a state of emergency. I kept my eye on the TV between phone calls, and there I saw the first tower collapse.
The shudder of horror I felt seeing the collapse snapped something in my mind. A thousand people, pulverized in seconds. And then the threat, to me in the present, suddenly felt very real. The scale of the destruction had just multiplied a hundredfold, and who knew if would continue to multiply? I could see the plume of smoke now - not on the TV, but by looking outside. I decided then to leave the city as soon as possible. I had been scheduled to fly home the following day anyways, but there was no way I was getting back on a plane, even if they did start flying again.
My friend finally made it back, after her long walk down from the Bronx. I had reached her family by phone, and we knew they were safe. I was torn about leaving, and felt more bonded to my friend than ever. But my sense of panic and danger remained. That afternoon I left the city by train, rented a car north of the city, and drove, by myself, across the country back to Portland.
This is my 9/11 story, my little picture. In the big picture, I hate how many holes there are in the official account of the attacks, and how the attacks have been used to justify terrible political and military ends. But I don’t want to start down those paths of speculation and teeth-gnashing today.
No, today I am thinking about just my experience of that day, and it’s undeniable that my being in New York on 9/11 had a huge impact on my life. A few years afterward, I started dating that friend, while she was still living in New York. Then she moved out to Portland to be with me. Now she is my wife.
