I don't watch morning TV. So five years ago today, I dropped Cory at school, then went home to get Sabrina ready for her first day of her last year of preschool.
As I turned on the car, the radio came on, set to a local news station. I heard a man's voice, full of urgency, saying, "We're going to city hall now--" And I clicked the radio off. I assumed they were talking about Los Angeles City Hall. I assumed it was some local crime or political story. And off we drove to preschool, happily playing games and singing songs as we drove.
When I pulled up in the parking lot, another mom, Sandy, was unbuckling her son from his car seat. And she was crying. Something horrible must have happened for a mom to cry on the first day of preschool! I rushed over to ask what was wrong.
She stared at me as if I came from another universe and said, "Haven't you heard? Don't you know?"
And she told me what had happened. Other moms assured me -- The U.S. was under attack by terrorists. The World Trade Center had been destroyed.
It made no sense to me. How could something so solid, so stately, be destroyed that easily? I had just been in the World Trade Center two months earlier. Just a week before, Lee and I had been talking about how, next time we were in New York, we should eat dinner at the top of the WTC, wouldn't it be fun.
Some of the moms had to race off. Their other kids' schools were closing, they had to pick up their children. Or even if the schools were staying open, they wanted their kids at home.
I called Lee. "Turn on the TV," I told him. My voice was shaky. And then I called my son's school. "Are you closing the school" I wanted to know. "Now why would we do that?" said the receptionist. And her voice was an echo of sanity and calm on an insane day.
I spent the rest of the day doing what we all did. Watching TV and trying to fathom how the world had changed. And over the next few days, I put Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins in my car CD player, and listened to it over and over... the stories of how "something just broke" but the country keeps going anyway. An odd choice, but it helped.
That's what I was doing five years ago today.
Where were you five years ago today? And what music were you listening to in the next week? (I know the comboxes are iffy -- hit refresh a few times, and you should be able to access them.)
Let us know....
Monday, September 11, 2006
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We were at the Dr.'s office, we rushed over with Henry who was then 5 years old. He was always 'sick' in those days. A stomach this or a running nose that. And since he's autistic & doesn't communicate well, we used to run to the Dr. all the time. (Now with diet change & vitamins he's pretty healthy and when he's not, we don't run around like crazy people anymore. Mostly just let him sleep it off.)
The nurse came in to tell us that a plane hit the WTC. We thought that it was a bi plane or some sort of sightseeing kind of deal -- I mean, who else would be flying around New York City?
After the dr. visit, who prescribed nothing but more wait and see, we went home thinking maybe we'd catch a glimpse of a newscast & see the plane sticking out of the WTC before they got it cleaned up.We got home in time to see the first tower fall. I stayed home with Henry for 3 days and just watched the news, until I knew it was making me sick with worry about things I couldn't do anything about. Wish I'd thought of music.
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