Do you remember where you were?

I was in bed, starting the first day of my vacation, still dozing and savouring the feeling of sleeping in past 6am. I was fully awakened by the phone ringing. It was Tim, telling me to turn on the TV. I was slightly disappointed at having been roused so early on my first day off, but also puzzled. It's not like Tim to call me early in the morning and his voice sounded... odd. I reached for the remote control on the bedside table and flicked it on. My eyes were still blurry and trying to focus when the image of the first world trade center tower, smoke billowing out of the side, appeared on screen. As I watched, Tim was explaining what I was looking at. A plane had just hit the world trade center. At this point, it was just the one tower. None of the news stations had confirmed what had happened. Many of the reporters were speculating that it was a horrible accident. Until, as I watched in disbelief with Tim still on the phone, a second plane hit the second tower. Live. On TV. While I watched. The news reporter was stunned into silence. So were Tim and I. And it was clear then, that this was no accident.

I sat in my bed, in my pjs, glued to my television for the next several hours. I watched as one and then the other tower collapsed. I watched the collapses repeatedly. Over and over again on multiple stations. I watched them switch to the pentagon, confirming a plane had just crashed into it. I watched them switch to the flight 93 debris field, smouldering. I watched the footage taken by cameramen from inside the cloud of the world trade center debris after the collapse, cameras rolling as they ran for cover and their lives. Then I watched footage of the pentagon wall collapsing. And then of the smouldering flight 93 debris again. And then I watched as they announced the grounding of all civilian aircraft, and the closing of the stock market. And then I watched the replays of all of the footage. Again, and again and again.

After a while I got out of bed and looked out the window. It looked like any other day outside my window. I was still not sure what had happened.

At some point later in the day I felt compelled to do something. But I had no idea what. I called work to check in with my team. At the time I was the operations manager for a personal finance web site. I offered some unneeded and completely irrelevant guidance to my extremely capable team on how to handle the deluge of traffic on our web site wanting the latest news on the attacks, and then the news on the stock market closing. And then I decided to get dressed and go donate blood.

The rest of the week is a blur, and I don't remember much. Other than it wasn't much of a vacation. Although I do remember for several days afterwards, the eerie silence in our skies, broken only by the faint roar of a fighter jet somewhere high above, patrolling. Every hour it seemed.

That's where I was when 9/11 happened. That's what I was doing. As I commented on my sister's blog earlier today, when I was growing up I would sometimes wonder what "the event" would be during my lifetime for which I would remember where I was and what I was doing. The way we hear our parents talk about JFK's assassination and how they remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news he had been shot. Or the way our grandparents remember where they were and what they were doing on December 7th, 1941.

I watched a documentary on 9/11 yesterday. Not the ABC piece-of-crap fiction that they heavily publicized and had the nerve to broadcast despite the public protests, but actual interviews with victims' families. My heart wrenched. I cried. I... We... Tim and I are so blessed. So lucky. To have each other, and Bobbin, and our health, and our families, and our friends. Whatever little daily dramas we act out and stresses we experience are not even molecule-sized blips on the radar screen by comparison. What these victims, their families, and the few survivors have been through, it puts things in perspective. And their strength gives me strength. And hope.

One of my hopes is that "the event" for which Bobbin's generation will remember where they were and what they were doing, if there has to even be one, is a happy one. A victory for humanity. A glorious achievement. But not one of violence or deep sadness.

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