No matter which way you look at it, September 11th is a tough day in anyone's memory.
I will never forget where I was or what I was doing when I first found out what was going on.
As a homeschooler, I didn't turn on the TV when I woke up that morning. I made breakfast, I drank coffee, and I chilled out before starting to educate my children. Then around 9:30, I turned on the computer to check my email.
I was on AOL at the time. A very dear friend of mine -- Linda -- IM'ed me almost immediately.
"Isn't it awful?" she wrote.
"What?" I typed.
"Turn on your TV."
I didn't even get offline -- I went up to the front of the house and turned on the TV, and from that moment on, I was riveted.
I lived on my couch for three days. I didnt turn off the TV. I did talk to people on the phone. And at about 3:00 in the afternoon, I woke up my husband, and I made him wake up because I had heard that gas prices were being raised, and we needed to fill our tanks with gas and get extra, because of the price gouging, which I never saw, but I always heard about during that week....
A year or two later, we were at dinner with friends, talking about that week. Some of our friends were in another state on a golf vacation with a large group of golfers. Our friend said, "We were on the greens that morning. When we finished our round, we heard what had happened. And then we didn't feel much like golfing after that."
Instead of feeling total empathy with that party, I was struck by his disconnection. "Didn't feel like golfing"??? He's got to be kidding. I could barely function that week. I couldn't remember to cook dinner for my children. I couldn't get off the couch. I was absolutely slain by the events of 9/11. I bawled my eyes out every time I saw a recap. "Didn't feel like golfing"??? Is he insane?
Now -- MSNBC re-ran their entire original 9/11 coverage this morning. And I didn't join the broadcast until 10:00 or so. I saw the towers collapse. I saw the misinformation as it was read out loud by anchors as if it were news instead of gossip at that point.
I remember that day so horribly vividly.
And tempered with that recollection -- is the memory that I was smoking the entire time.
A month later, my sister and I went to NYC. I would like to say we were with the rescue and relief teams, but really, we were the tourists. We were among the first tourists to brave getting on planes and flying directly to New York City, and we were proud to do so. When I think of our memorable trip, parts of it are colored by the fact that it was less than a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The other parts are colored by -- we were two smokers among thousands of non-smokers.
Smoking
Let's face it; we can't get away from it. What joins us all here is the fact that we are all quitting smoking.
I spent days after 9/11, camping out on the couch and smoking.
Now I'm watching those same videos, remembering New York City in early October, 2001, -- and I'm not smoking now.
It's a whole new world.
Check with me in a couple of decades to see if this "new world" has improved any since 9/11.
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3 comments:
I'd love to interview you on my radio show this weekend about your journey through quitting smoking. Please email me at getrealgirls@yahoo.com and I'll give you the details. Thanks!
Bay, I was the same way. I went to work because I had to, and I was irate by a conversation I had with a someone mid-morning concerned with stuff that wouldn't matter on any day, especially not on that morning after the first two flights hit the towers and before there was even more to come at the Pentagon and that field in Shanksville. It's all like yesterday. I didn't even know anyone. Or know anyone first hand who knew anyone. Still, every anniversary, I remember, and I feel paralyzed with the memories. This year I did a tribute on my blog for a beautiful and so young flight attendant who just seems like the coolest person. She was one, just one, of the 2996 lives so brutally stolen in such an unbelievable - 6 years later, my jaw still drops - event that has changed us forever. Still feeling paralyzed yesterday and still not wanting those bastards to win, I went online and set up an appointment to donate blood.
I can't even begin to fathom how not OK I'd be had any of those folks been my mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, best friend, kind lady next door, quirky guy I'd seen on the bus every day prior or if it had been a spouse. I feel shredded inside even now, and I didn't know a one. Crazy powerful and sad.
OK, I'm just rambling now. Like you, I spent a lot of yesterday remembering, but I didn't smoke.
I think the worst thing for me about that day was being separated from my family. I pulled Dylan out of school, but my husband was still at work - in a skyscraper downtown. I was so relieved when they evacuated his building at noon.
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