Where were you?
Where were you?
An open mic for Flight School writers đ¤
Welcome Flight Schoolers. This day requires its own placeholder: 9-11 and the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. So, letâs do it.
First, a moment.
Head bowed.
Mind clear.
And a prayerâŚyour own or mineâŚ
âŚfor the souls who lost their lives on that terrible day, the families who lost their beloveds, and the ongoing reverberations felt through our young nationâin cities and townsâfor that evil act of violence. We are told âvengeance is mine,â and so must trust that a higher power knows the whole truth of that day and the players who pulled the strings and that that great power will bring about justice.
Until then, we remember.
Member, as defined in medical dictionaries, is a distinct body part or limb. To dis-member something would be to deprive, divide, or reduceâŚ.As itâs opposite, re-member means to put back together, to recall, or retain.
~ From The Powerful Truth of Remembering, by Lori Jackson
Remembering: Where Was I?
Twenty-two years ago, I was overblown pregnant with my second child. People would stop me on the sidewalk because they thought I was having twins.
âNo,â Iâd tell them. âJust a big one, it seems. A girl.â
I got the news when I was touring for Blackbird in Amsterdam. Iâd stepped (waddled) into a florist to get a bouquet for my Dutch publisher when the shop owner, a grizzled older man wearing a fedora and a smock, hurried over and asked if I was an American.
Surrounded by roses, dahlias, sunflowers, bluebells, cosmos, and so many more, I looked at him for a long moment. What made me such a standout, I thought. Surely not the bulbous belly?
âI am,â I said.
His face softened, and he touched my elbow. âYour country has been attacked,â he said.
He steered me to the front of the store, where a small television sat on a narrow countertop. On the screen, the instant replay of the images of airplanes flying into the towers. Again and again, the powers-that-be rewound the tape and started that reel over. Towers standing. Towers gone. Towers standing. Towers gone.
The mind cannot grasp what itâs never seen before, but the instincts know precisely what to do. I held my stomach, protective of the new life within, and then hurried out of the store and back to my hotel.
âAre you guys okay?â I asked my husband, who lived three thousand miles from ground zero. But what did I know? By the time I had him on the phone, all manner of horrors had played in my mind.
âYeah. Me and Spencer are fine,â he said, the sounds of the TV playing that same news I had just seen. âBut you need to come home. Now.â
Your Turn
Remembering: Where were you?
Where were you when it happened?
Please feel free to leave your story in the comments.
~ J.
Where were you?
Remembering: Where were you?
Where were you when it happened?
Please feel free to leave your story in the comments.
Some days are singular. Days we all always remember--weddings, funerals, the birth of a child. All events bloom in slices and sections of our lives. Individually. But this single event is a shared scar. We all remember where we were because we were there, no matter where we were, every American was right there feeling the heat and breathing the caustic air, some were just a hell of a lot closer.
That very early Reno morning, I was deep in sleep in my warm, comfy bed when my husband burst in urgently requesting that I turn on the TV. It had to be a dream. Brent couldn't stand having the TV on anytime but especially early in the morning.
What?
He walked quickly around the bed while I scrambled to find the remote and lay down beside me fully dressed in his suit and tie, not even removing his shoes. He put his arms around me as I turned the sound up. The strength of his arms braced me. The silent message, Be prepared. Whatever it was, I could stand it, in the strength of his arms. Or so I thought.
Peter Jennings tried to help explain the footage as a plane exploded into the side of the twin tower.
What? Not real. Not actual. Not happening.
Your mind is amazing at assessing and sorting incoming information. Dreams have their own feel, a familiar texture allowing us to fly or fall but in a personal context we survive. Moving pictures automatically come with a level of disbelief. Is this news or a movie contrived to horrify.
I knew even as I watched, it was real. But my mind kept me at a safe distance. It takes time to sort through what could not be real. It was an inevitable bridge I would cross in a matter of minutes, but safe in his arms listening to his heartbeat, I waited to cross.
And then there was another plane and the twin was brutally attacked. Both towers stood mute and stunned as flames gouged and twisted the stacked straight lines into piles of debris changing our landscape forever.
Then nothing but cement clouds hiding the horrors we were not spared but would not be eyewitnesses to. Powder-white figures raced out of the grey and away. Like animals out of a forest fire. They would be the second wave of America's ghosts. But we didn't know that then.
All I knew, all I was absolutely certain of, was my husband's protective embrace.
The horror wouldn't change. In fact, it would deepen, the wound so much worse than we knew in those early hours. It would take weeks to triage, and years to parse every movement and its meaning.
But America did as best we could.
What I couldn't have known then is that in too short a time, I would have my own private 9/11.
I would lose that protective embrace in another singular moment. Mine alone.
But that morning when America was sucker punched, I remember the feel against my face of my husband's worsted wool softened by my tears. And the hard edge of his leather Oxfords cutting into my ankle.