we remember...

"In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants and hold the world in arms grown strong with love
And there may be many things we forget in the days to come,

But this will not be one of them."
— Brian Andreas (Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind)

It's one of those things, you know, when people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001. I was at home, getting ready for work. I worked at a consulting firm in Skokie, my first job out of college - I had graduated in May, 2001 - ready to go out into the world, right?

But then the world changed. So I was getting ready for work. The tv was off - my dad, who worked nights at the time, was still asleep, and we didn't want the noise to wake him. We were waiting for the plumber. He's the one who told us to turn on the tv - a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

We thought it was an accident, something that had gone horribly wrong. No one could even believe that it might have been done on purpose. Who could even conceive of such a thing? I had to get to work, so I got in the car and drove maybe 10 minutes. My office was right behind my high school, so this route was familiar to me. I couldn't help but think, though, that while everything looked the same, it somehow all felt completely different. Something had changed. Something was very wrong.

I remember I listened to Renee Fleming sing the Song to the Moon in the car on the way to work. It was soothing, and even though I didn't have all the details yet, I felt that soothing sounds were needed. I did not sit at my desk that day - someone was out and I was covering her phone - to add to the overall feeling of strangeness and confusion. I don't think any work got done by anyone that day - we were all online, or listening to the radio, trying to find out more news - what was happening out there. At the time we just didn't know, we didn't know if there were more planes, heading for Chicago, for the west coast, for the capitol. We had offices in Seattle and in Washington DC. Some of our consultants were traveling, so we worried.

I don't know why we all just didn't go home, but maybe there was a comfort in all being together. We had a staff meeting planned for that day, we ordered from a place called Pockets. we didn't have the meeting, but we still had the food. I remember eating it at my actual desk, scrolling through the news, emailing my mom (working at school) and my friends, trying to get more news, any news, about what was going on. I remember hearing stories of courageous rescuers and of incredible sadness and loss.

I remember the eerie silence of not hearing planes overhead, in the days that followed.