September 12, 2011

So there I was, 3651 days ago, sleeping cozily in my bed. It wasn't unusual for people to call me at such an obscene time in the morning. I mean 9 am might as well be the crack of dawn for a single girl living the life in Boston. But the calls were stacked, and when I looked, they were from my family. I felt fear climb up my spine and grab my throat. It was most likely Dad. He's practically had one foot in the grave since he found out his third child was, in fact, another girl. And as I opened my flip phone to make the dreaded call home. The phone rang again.
"Hello?"
"Brooke! Are you ok?" My older sister Carrie.
"Huh? Me. I'm sleeping. What's up?"
"There are planes crashing into buildings in New York City!"
"What?!"
"Turn on the TV!"
"I don't have a TV!" (seriously..I was a traveling nurse and had much better things to do than watch Golden Girls all day- and I could rent the first couple seasons of Sex and the City- so who needs cable?)
"Well find one. They think it's terrorists. Be careful, there might be more attacks!"

What the hell? Terrorists? 4 hours from here, crashing into a major metropolitan city.
Bang Bang Bang- "Shirein!! Get up get up get up..let me in!" The high rise I lived in had a fairly speedy elevator, but that felt like it took a year to go up to the 27th floor from the 19th floor that my studio was on.
"Are you crazy woman!" Shirein in her poodle pajamas (wtf is that about!) answered the door (also living the single life where 9 am is completely unacceptable for visiting hours).

"There are terrorists crashing planes into buildings in New York City..Turn on the News!"

And we sat there, knees pulled into our chests, mouths covered with shaky hands and watched it all unfold. I saw the news coverage of people jumping from the World Trade Center buildings. I saw some link arms and jump. I watched some jump in an embrace. Some jumped alone. To their deaths. My imagination has no concept of what they were leaving behind in those buildings. The living hell that no one will ever know. They quickly stopped showing footage of the jumpers. The mothers, fathers, husbands and wives stopped being filmed as they escaped and succombed to their fate. The Pentagon was hit. A flight crashed in Pennsylvania. There were warnings of other threats in other cities. We sat there in a high rise across from the Federal Building in Boston and realized getting outside of the city would be a wise decision.
Walking outside for the first time on September 11th in downtown Boston- It felt as if the weight of the world was mourning. Even the pigeons seemed to show their sadness. There were no cars on the streets in Boston. The only business I found open was a 7-11 on the corner. It occured to me that at that moment I could've been experiencing the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Apocolaypse. I didn't even consider buying water or canned goods. The reason being that the abandoned city had plenty to offer me if I should need it. The silence of a sadness like that grips you and leaves a tattoo where it once held you. Too stunned for anger, too shocked for tears- September 12th will forever be the day that I was most proud to be an American. At the Massachusetts General Hospital on September 12th there were hundreds of people in line to donate blood, and those lines were formed at every hospital in the city, in the state and across the country. People calling to volunteer to do anything. Please..they just wanted to do something. There were American Flags on cars, buses, and every restaurant window. Men and women - strangers living next to each other began to reach out. Began to stand together as Americans. The devastating reality of so many final conversations. The heart wrenching loss of self that wives and husbands must have felt when their loved one never called back. When everything   wasn't    ok. When there would never be another I love you. I break inside a little bit at the thought of that ever happening to me or to someone I love. But THAT day..we all loved every single one of them and we felt it. We hurt together, even if we would never know that kind of hurt personally.
Soon there were stories of courage and luck and heroism. Of those who missed a flight. Who called in sick. Who made it out. We held onto those lifelines. We stop and remember on September 11th, and the lost are in our thoughts while the living are in our prayers. But I suggest we celebrate on September 12th..the acts of human kindness, no..not just human kindness, but American kindness, and the love that we showed our fellow man. Because United we did stand.