Today it has been 10 years since our country was attacked by terrorists. It doesn't feel like it has been 10 years, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Lynn was in CA on business. I was driving my then 14 year old son to the high school and listening to the radio... KSL... like I do every morning. They had just gotten word that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. My husband had just been there a week or two before, staying at the Marriott Hotel right by there. Later they had to tear down that Marriot because it was so badly damaged from the fall of the Twin Towers.
I remember thinking that it must have been a small plane, probably with engine troubles... simply an accident. Then, the radio announcers said, there was more breaking news... a 2nd plane had just hit the other tower. I knew right then... this was no accident! I began to cry. What did this mean for our country? What did this mean for us? Someone was attacking our dear country!
I was shaken! Should I send my children to school? I wanted to gather all my loved ones around me. I wanted to keep them all safe. I went ahead and took my son to school and as I returned to our home, I was making a plan on what I would do, if it looked like whoever was attacking, was attacking across the country. I would retrieve my son. I would not send the other kids to school, I would locate Lynn and make a plan to get him home to Utah.
When I reached home, I called my husband's cell phone... no answer. Did he know we were under attack? CA was an hour behind us in time, so it was only about 6:40am there where he was. Was he still asleep not realizing that the world was falling apart that day? I left a message to turn on the TV and to call me ASAP. He didn't call for about an hour. He had not gotten my message (no surprise there... he wasn't very good at checking messages). He had gone to the local Ernst and Young office across the street for his scheduled meeting, but there was a sign on the door that the office was closed. "That's weird," he thought, "that they would call us out here for a meeting and then close the office!" Then a security guard told him what had happened, so he went back to the hotel and asked for his room back, and then he called me. It had been about an hour since I had called him. I told him to turn on the TV, updated him on all I knew from news reports, and told him that all planes were grounded and that he would not be flying home. It was a good thing that he had gotten his room back, because all the hotels filled up quickly. We decided that we would leave the kids in school until more information became available.
While I was waiting for Lynn to call me back, I had also called my parents (I woke them up) and my sister. They were all in shock, like I was... like the whole country was... like the whole world was!
I felt like a zombie the rest of the day. I was in the "zone". I watched the TV all day and night. I worried that I was traumatizing my little 4 year old, watching the horrific events all day... but I couldn't stop. I watched as the second tower was hit, as the first tower fell, as the Pentagon was hit, as the 2nd tower fell, as Flight 93 crashed in PA... I cried... and I watched in horror. I saw things falling out of the tower before it collapsed, never dreaming that they were people jumping. Thank heavens it didn't compute... that would have sent me over the edge. And I watched it over and over, and over again... I just couldn't stop... when would it end? And then it hit me... the horror of it would never end. We were living in a big piece of history.
The next day, as I was taking son #2 to the high school, I was stopped at the intersection at 6th Ave. & B Street, just as the neighborhood firetruck went up the street. A large flag of the United States of America was blowing out behind it. I got all emotional and tears fell... again.
Lynn ended up driving home from CA the next day with a friend he had run into and 2 others. The friend had a rental car. That was also a blessing, since all the rental cars were soon sold out, by people trying to get home to their families. Lynn's car was still at our local airport in short term parking, and when he retrieved it they still charged him. Even though the whole world had stopped for awhile, apparently airport parking still kept charging. Oh the irony.
Three years later when we went to Europe to pick up Son #1 from his LDS mission, I had a great time, but I remember telling my husband I was going to kiss the ground when I got back in the USA. There is no place like it! It is a wonderful place to live!
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