10 Years.
It's been 10 years since September 11, 2001. I remember that day thinking that each minute seemed like an hour.
At the time, I lived less than 10 miles away from The World Trade Center in Manhattan.
I worked probably less than 500 ft away from the Trade Center.
My building, World Financial Center 2, with the Trade Center in the background...
But thank God, on September 11, 2001 I was on a train traveling from Barcelona to Madrid Spain. Nearly 4,000 miles away, WITH my mom.
I think my mom would have died if she didn't know immediately that I was ok. So I am SO thankful for that.
I don't think that I've even talked about that day on the blog. But if I have forgive me for me going over it again. I really don't think that I have and I think it's important to tell my story for my kids to hear one day.
Admittedly, it's been 10 years and memories fade. Our minds change the facts on us. My mom and I already admitted that we had different versions of the events of that day after only a couple years afterward. So all I can do is tell what my head remembers. Whether it's 100% correct or not. (though, of course, I think it is.....)
My mom and I woke up in Barcelona 9/11/01. We took a cab to the train station. Bought a one way ticket to Madrid. Somewhere in the middle of the trip I decided I needed to use the restroom. I headed to the back of the car, and waited my turn. A woman with an English accent asked me if I was American. I am always on guard and paranoid, so I responded "yes" with a bit of an attitude....like, "What's it to you?" She told me that there was something terrible going on in the States and that someone in the next car back was on the phone with someone in America and giving off information. Huh???
She persuaded me to come with her to find out more information. I headed to the back of the next car and there were about 3 Americans sitting near each other. They looked concerned but not overwhelmingly alarmed. Another woman, on the other side was listening on a cell phone. She apparently was Spanish and her husband was an American reporter, in America and telling her everything he knew.
I admit it's a bit of a blur. But I remember that the few American's there were from places like, South Dakota, Nebraska, and West Virgina. And while I'm not putting those places down, they also are of somewhat small populations and not known for their skyscrapers. They told me that "Planes were being flown into buildings. Trade Center, White House, Capitol, Pentagon, etc." It was an exaggeration of the truth. And while I should have been astounded at the White House and Capitol, I remember thinking....The Trade Center???? In New York????!??!! They, like many other people pictured a small single engine aircraft....but I, Miss Debbie Downer, immediately envisioned a large passenger plane hitting one of the towers.
I raced back to my mom and told her what I'd heard. Information was obviously hit or miss, shocking and sparce. But we both understood the magnitude of it.
My mom seemed to know that the couple seated in front of us were English speaking and so told them what she knew. They shrugged their shoulders and made some stupid comment. (I know my mom remembers the details of that more than I do!)
We pulled into the train station in Madrid. I was anxious and agitated. I knew the impact that a large plane would have on the Trade Center. And I knew how many people worked on each floor.
A view of the building I worked in from the WTC...
I remember a crowd standing around a tv. I walked up on the back of it. Saw everyone's silent faces. Mouths hanging open. No one moving. I made my way in front of the tv and saw TWO towers burning. I didn't expect that. At all. My legs gave out and I fell to my knees.
The next thing I remember is being in the cab, on the way to our Hotel. We had left Barcelona a day or so early (this is one place my mom and I disagree). And so we didn't definitely have a hotel room. The radio in the cab was talking about the events going on in America. I speak Jr. High Spanish....which is actually better than I thought, but still shoddy.
We got to the hotel. The very sweet man at the check-in counter asked if we were Americans when we arrived. "Yes". He aplogized for what was happening. I was impatient. Anxious to get to a tv. I could hear a tv set to CNN in a room in the upstairs lobby. Just check us in! My mom told him that I lived in NYC and worked across the street. He looked so sad and said, "I'm so sorry. Both towers. They are gone." And he held up both hands and lowered each one, as if to say they fell down. I laughed. "Oh, no....they didn't fall down! They were hit by airplanes. They can't fall down." He said again, "Yes, they are gone. They fell down. I'm sorry." I just didn't believe him and couldn't wait much longer.
I went upstairs while my mom finished checking us in. There were about 30 people watching tv silently.
And there, on tv. I saw that the towers, both, in fact....did fall down.
I literally don't rememeber anything after that except that my mom and I holed up in our hotel room for the next two days. We watched CNN non-stop with the exception of beer runs to get us through this madness.
There's no way to really express what goes through your mind in a time like this. My whole life I thought about how my parents had to live through the Depression, the Second World War, The Vietnam War, Assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. I immediately realized, that this was as significant, if not more so. What the hell was this?! Life as I'd known it would never ever be the same.
I honestly didn't know if people I worked with were ok. I worked so close and it happened during rush hour.
If I'd been in NYC that day, and not on vacation, I would have arrived to work at 9am. The first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46am. Most of the time, when I went to work, I took the subway and walked through the underground mall. I used to walk through this very spot, daily...
I would come up these escalators on the slight north side of the north tower
to the over the street walkway bridge that connected the North Trade Center Tower to The World Financial Center. That bridge was demolished completely in the destruction.
I heard stories from my co-workers. The elevator shaft was in the center of our building and had several tvs lining that waiting area. They were pretty much always turned to the news. Several people saw images of the burning north tower, before they looked out a window and realized what was happening.
There were fire drills prior to this day. I recall being told to go up or down three floors (depending on where the fire was) and that the structure of the tower was safe enough to contain a major fire. I imagine, this is what the people were told in the WTC also. But people in my office decided to go all the way down. Unfortunately they exited onto the east facing side, which faced the north tower....which had debris and bodies falling within feet of my co-workers. ( the side with the flag on it) No one I know was killed or injured doing this, but were emotionally tramatized for sure.
I had another friend that walked through the north tower lobby to get to work. (Sometimes I did this too....because it was always a thrill to me to walk through the lobby of the WTC to go to work) He remembers the elevators exploding, being thrown back, hitting a wall and seeing people on fire in the revolving doors. He had to have, too many to count, shards of glass removed from his face, arms, etc. But he escaped and was relatively un-injured.
The stories go on and on.
I was on a missing persons list briefly, since I was out of town and didn't get to call in to touch base immediately. I couldn't get through to America anywhere for a while.
We finally ventured out of our hotel room a few days later. We decided that we were in Spain for the first and maybe last time and should try to see it no matter how we felt. The people were unbelievable. So genuine. So loving. So endearing. But unfortunately, I also ran into some not-so great people. A couple of men on a train to Segovia laughed at our Newsweeks and said something in French. I wanted to kill them. But also we met such sweet people that they stood up for us in restaurants and hugged us. Surreal.
We were lucky enough to go home on the exact flight we were intended to. Flights resumed exactly one week after the day. We returned home Sept 17, 2001. It was the scariest flight of my life. But I literally kissed the floor of the airport in NY as gross as that is....when I returned home. I loved my country, my city, my co-workers, my own life. (still do!) I was as thankful to be home as I'd even been in my entire life.
But as I went home, in Queens...my apartment literally on the East River overlooking Manhattan, I could smell the Trade Center.....
I went back to work, but our offices/building was closed down due to structural damage. There was another Deloittle office in Times Square and so that's where we all piled in.
I was able to go to my cubicle which was in the middle of the building about the 14th or 15th floor. Slightly north and west. My desk and everything I had was covered in ash. It made my stomach turn knowing what the ash could be. People had stolen some of my things. I'll never undestand that. A couple pictures of me standing in front of the trade center.....some personal books.....some cds..... I don't understand people.
This isn't a picture I took, or even of my desk or right floor...but examples of what it definitely looked like when I went back in to get my things....
My desk was not nearly this damaged because it was more on the west side of the building. But it was smothered in dust and the offices on the east side just a few feet did look like this.
I was basically fired a year later, right before we moved back to our old building. Admittedly, I wasn't the greatest Admin. Hell, I'd moved to NYC to be a singer, not an Admin. And I was told that I wasn't the "cheerleader that the team needed" me to be for them through the hard times. But I didn't think I was THAT bad. Whatever. I'd learned that it certainly wasn't the end of the world....but it was hard looking out of the remenants of the Trade Center while being told to "pack up my things" and head off for a new chapter.
Mike could tell you his story....but he was going to school in Philly at the time. He knew two people that died and his brother Chris, spent a lot of time working at the Trade Center in the aftermath. He is a Port Authority Police Officer. Mike and I actually met while we were both working at Deloitte in the 2 World Financial Center so it is a personal piece of our history. Everyone, whether they lived in NYC, Dallas, Pittsburgh, China or Spain has their own story to tell from these events. None are a happy one.
Kate wanted to know more this year and so I let her in on some more information. She knows that the towers had fires. They fell down. People died. She knows that it was Osama Bin Laden's fault. But she doesn't know about the planes. I don't want her to be scared to fly. So I don't know when I'll tell her.....
10 years. Unreal.
