lest we should forget

Today is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Everyone can remember exactly where they were on that day. I decided I should write down my memories of that day for posterity and all that, but I never dreamed of how difficult it would actually be. I wasn't in New York City or Washington D.C., or even watching the news, so why should I find this a trying task?

Perhaps that in recent days leading up to today news footage has resurfaced - which I have been watching - the memorial in New York has opened to the public, authorities have been tirelessly working to prevent another attack that has been been threatened on the anniversary. In short, all the emotions of that day are in the forefront of the collective mind of America.

Like countless others, I remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I had graduated from Crown College in May of that year, had gotten a job at Halla Nursery right out of college and the world was before me. It was about 7:45am on a beautiful Tuesday morning (in the years after my memory said it was a Wednesday but the recent news about the anniversary corrected me) and I was just parking my car at work. I was listening to the KS95 Morning Show and just before I turned off the car the djs said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

Wow, I thought, that's awful. And, just like the djs, I conjectured that it was a disoriented Cessna, that the pilot and his passenger were certainly dead and also a few people in the office. The same thing had happened [decades before at the Sears Tower] in Chicago. So sad. Well, I had to get to work, turned off the car and went to clock in.

I was the cashier in the garden center that day. Mornings are always slow and the normal amount of customers filtered in. I remember one lady, as she was checking out, asked if I had heard what happened. I, somewhat unconcernedly, said that I had heard that a plane (or did I say Cessna?) had run into the World Trade Center. The lady looked at me and said another one hit the other tower.

"Another one?!" I said in disbelief. She repeated that a second plane had hit the other tower.

I continued to look at her puzzled. I said something about how this didn't seem like a coincidence and that it was all very weird. I believe she agreed and went out of the store. I wish I could remember if she was the one who told me that it was in fact not a Cessna but a full size passenger jet. Perhaps she was. I remember that she seemed excited instead of panicked or concerned. Recalling the memory even now it seemed an eager excited. Don't misunderstand me; I believe it was an excitement that comes with being the first to share very important news with someone. I think she, like the rest of the country, wasn't fully aware of what these events truly meant.

After she went out, I was left in the store alone, quite puzzled with new thoughts headed into a new direction: What are the chances that another plane would accidentally hit the building next to one that was already clearly damaged? And besides, how do you miss buildings as large as the World Trade Center? (oh, how eerily ironic those thoughts would turn out to be...) Was this on purpose?

Not much later, Anna, one of the managers, came into the store. She seemed flustered and rushed. She told me a plane crashed into the Pentagon.

"The Pentagon?!" I said, not really understanding. "What's going on?" I asked her. It was then that I realized that something was seriously wrong. My mind was floundering in uncharted waters. Anna didn't have an answer for me - no one did yet - but asked me to change the road sign and handed me a piece of paper with the new thing the sign was to say: Pray for our nation.

I had changed the sign many times before and it was a task that I rather enjoyed. Sometimes the plastic letters didn't stick to the suction cup at the end of the pole and it required a few tries, but it didn't happen all that often and, more often than not, I had no troubles at all. Not that day. The letters wouldn't stick to the suction cup. The letters would fall off the pole as I lifted it up. Then the letters I had managed to slide into the tracks started falling like they were being pried off. I had this bizarre feeling that I was being prevented from putting up that sentence. Prevented by something evil. Before I had a chance to think or even knew what I was doing, I said out loud and forcefully, "Stop it!" I don't know who I thought I was addressing or how I knew that was what I needed to do. All I know is that after that every letter stuck to the pole on the first try and stayed on the sign....

I don't know how much time elapsed. No more customers came to the store. No one was on the roads. No one was calling to ask if we had such-and-such plant. It was strange. I was alone in the garden center listening to the looped mus-ak. I felt oddly isolated. I wanted to know what was going on.

My co-worker, Adam, came into the store to tell me one of the World Trade Center towers fell. "Fell?!" I said stupidly, my imagination flashing a picture of all 100 stories of the tower tipping over like a tree. Ridiculous. "What do you mean 'fell' "? He repeated that the tower collapsed to the ground. I stared. It was such a wild and outlandish proclamation that I didn't believe him. I physically couldn't believe him. It was like someone declaring 2 plus 2 isn't 4, but 17 and explaining how it has always been 17. Adam asserted again that yes, the World Trade Center fell. But how? I mean, of course it was terribly damaged, but it's made of concrete, steel....the elevator shafts and stairwells.... how could its entire support system fail? And besides, the planes would have had to hit at the base of the buildings for one to fall, my logic told me; but they hit high on the buildings. No, this wasn't possible.

Adam and I went back to whatever we had been working on (although I don't know how much "work" there was to do - there hadn't been a single customer for hours). At some point I went to the office - lunch? bathroom break? The designers and other managers were sort of gathered together; Craig, one of the designers, was telling them something. He said the other tower had fallen. He had been somewhere with a TV (information!) and described how the towers collapsed, straight down, and how he could hardly believe it. Adam was telling the truth. I stood with the group, listening to Craig's report with the same amazement and incredulity as the others.

I tore myself away and returned to the garden center. I had had enough. There was something tragic, horrific happening, something that affected our country to the core, something that had cruelly plunged us into a new reality. I wanted, craved information. I knew there was a radio stashed in the storage room in the back of the store. Although we weren't supposed to have the radio out, I didn't care; this was different. I don't remember tuning or searching for a news station. Coverage of what was happening seemed to be the only thing on the entire airwaves.

The news anchors were going over the events that had already happened in New York and Washington, discussing various hypotheses of who did this, why, what America would do to find them, etc. Then I finally heard news when it happened: there were reports of yet another plane that had crashed in rural Pennsylvania about 45 minutes southwest of Pittsburgh. I suddenly got cold. Not because of the revelation that there was yet another plane with yet another target, but because of where the plane crashed. One of my friends from college was from a town that was about 45 minutes southwest of Pittsburgh. He was still in Minnesota so I knew he was safe, but what about his family? I listened intently for more details of where the plane went down. The details were slow to come in, there was just too much going on to keep up with everything. I couldn't stand it anymore, pulled out my cell phone and made a personal call to my friend on company time. He had heard of the fourth plane, had called his family, they were all safe. He was clearly agitated and wanted to call his family again, so we cut our call short. At least there was some good news in all of this.

I kept the radio on. My other co-workers would stop in every now and again to listen and stay up-to-date. It was nice to have their brief company - costumers had stopped coming long, long ago and the store was lonely, especially with the grim nature of the news now filling the store.

Finally my shift ended. I was rooming with some college friends in Eden Prairie, but instead of going there, I went to my dad's house in Chaska; his TV - the source of information - was closer. On my way I called my sister Amy. She was at Concordia University in St. Paul and most likely had been watching the news most of the day. I asked her what more she knew, which wasn't much more than what I had already learned. But she described in more detail the footage of the actual events. And she told me that people were jumping from the top of the towers. "What?" The 2 plus 2 is 17 feeling. "How...(horror)...why would they jump?" Either that or burn alive. Dear God. I didn't want to believe her.

I was still on the phone with her when I got to my dad's. I didn't hang up when I turned on the TV. That was my first sight of the horrors of the reality of what everyone else had been watching for hours and hours. The emotions started to kick in. This was real. This was here. It looked like war. The news station was replaying footage taken after both towers had been hit but before they fell. The camera was a fair distance away from the towers, but there was enough detail to see papers and fluttering down. Then I saw it. "Oh my God, that was a person! That was a person!" Among the debris and fluttering papers raining down from the highest floors of the World Trade Center, was the unmistakable form of a human. Falling. Doomed.

I don't remember when I hung up with Amy. I don't remember how long I stayed at my dad's watching the news. I do remember watching the footage of the towers collapsing, like an accordion, and being... gone. I remember watching footage of the second plane hitting the tower, how there was a half-second where it surreally disappeared into the building, then exploded in a spectacular ball of flame. I remember seeing the footage of the airplane-shaped hole in the Pennsylvania field, I could see the outline of the wings, but there was no airplane. I remember learning of the incredible bravery and self-sacrifice of the passengers of that plane, United 93. I remember how quiet the outside was. No airplanes. Everything was grounded. I never realized how often I heard airplanes and never thought anything of them. Now their absence was deafening. But I know I heard one of the military bombers flying high and fast over our country. No one believes that I could hear one since they fly so high. I know there is no way I could have seen one. But I know I heard an airplane when there were supposed to be none.

I remember seeing more American flags flying proudly than I had ever seen before.

And now, just like when I asked my mom where she was when John F. Kennedy was shot, I will be able to answer my kids when they ask where I was on 9-11, and explain to them how reality changed.