It was too early for me but too late for everyone in the two burning towers of New York City.
My mom called. I didn't pick up. It was 8:45am PST and as an unemployed person, that was too early to wake up. She left a message. "Sweetheart, don't turn on the TV, it will scare you to death...it looks like someone bombed New York."
I was already there. I turned the TV on just in time to count the first of five million times that day that I'd see footage of the second plane flying into a Tower. WHA....I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Wha...?
My then-husband called to announce his eminent return from work. Shortly thereafter our best friends were also relieved of work duty. The news was reporting threats against San Francisco too. We all gathered on our sofa; I remained in pajamas for the length of the day. One friend brought beer. We stared at the tv and cried. We gave ourselves free reign to drink.
Sometimes my husband and our friends would go out on the deck to smoke. I remained frozen on the sofa. Through all the repetition and rhetoric of the news, I watched it for hours, not returning to bed until nearly midnight that night. I cried for those dead, and even more for the people who were going to die in what would surely become a war of epic proportions as President Bush went out and "got the evildoers." I prayed for the children sure to be facing a future without their parents, for the fear that made people jump from the burning buildings, for the casualties who would have to pay dearly for the extravagant hate of their leaders.
Beer didn't help. Nothing could.
Today I say prayers for the families -- on both sides -- who lost their loved ones 10 years ago, and in the bloodbath of vengeance ever since.
