The Po Show

9/11

I didn't live in NY on 9/11/01.

I was in L.A., and I was online early that morning (I had dial up back in those days, so no one could call while we were online), and didn't have the TV on. So I didn't know what was going on. Finally a friend got through to me on my cell phone and told me *not to go to work*, that the Twin Towers had fallen, that the world seemed to be ending.

I quickly switched on the TV and saw what had happened. I had 3 month old Tessa on my lap. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Ross decided we should bring Matthew to daycare as usual, to normalize the day, so he did. Then Ross went to school himself, like everything was normal. Not wanting to be alone with Tessa, I went to work after all, like normal. There weren't many of us there, but we craved each other's company. We brought a TV into the main room and watched CNN from there.

Ross and I had received an email from our friend Eric, who was the best man at our wedding. He worked 6 blocks from the WTC. The email was from right after the first tower was hit, basically a quick "You've probably all seen what's happened, and I wanted to let you all know that I'm okay." But after that, the second tower was hit, and the towers fell, and we didn't hear from him again. We called repeatedly, to his home phone and his cell, but couldn't get through. It would be three days before we heard from him.

My dear friend Darryl lives in D.C. It was four days before I got ahold of him. When I finally did, I snapped, "I've been trying to call you for days!," relief boiling into suppressed anxiety. "Sorry," he said wryly, "but we had an airplane crash into us, in case you hadn't heard."

These are tenous connections to the event. So many were so much more strongly touched, many so tragically you can't believe the universe could be so cruel. I feel I really don't have a right to even bring up the subject of 9/11, that it's completely, morally off limits to me.

But I will never, ever forget it.