We Were Here

On the September 11th, I was on the phone with Sylvia like I was every morning from 2000 until the second time George W. was elected. Don had gone into the office for the dreaded chore of cleaning out his desk after being swept up in the lay-off tide that was washing out the telecom industry. Evan and Kate were at their respective schools. As I fixed myself a cup of coffee with Erin on my hip, Sylvia said, "Are you watching the news?". To which I responded with my standard, "Of course not. You know I totally rely on others to let me know if there is some smidgen of news I need to know." She then said something wholly unexpected. "Someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center."
I could not reach my husband. He did not have a cell phone because we could not afford such luxuries at that time. I could not watch CNN because our antenna could only pick up PBS and occasionally the Spanish channels. I relied on Sylvia to describe the endless news loop. Erin and I eventually just load up to go over and stare in shock at Sylvia's screen while CNN raked in the ratings.
Finally I reached Don by land line hours later. He was relatively unaware of the momentous goings-on in the larger world because he was being slowly crushed by the weight of financial provision for our family and the reality that his paycheck would dry up and go away entirely in six weeks. Only the seconds ticking away inevitably in his head and the bitterness of knowing that the faceless company did not care how hard he worked or what a good job he did were real for him in the fog of depression. He did see that someone on his floor had a t.v. and was surprised by the oddity of a plane inserting itself into a solid building and the specks that fell from the heights before the very heights themselves descended to Ground Zero.
These moments are indelibly imprinted in my memory. I will always hear Sylvia's voice relaying that the unthinkable was not only possible, but true. My mother knows exactly where she was when Kennedy was assassinated, and for her that day brought the impossible into the realm of reality. I remember sitting in science class when the school's P.A. system announced the explosion of the space shuttle despite my belief growing up in Houston that N.A.S.A. was pretty much infallible. Holding my infant daughter and rocking her while hearing of the atrocities committed in a school building in Columbine followed years later. I wonder what else I hold impossible today that will be entirely too real tomorrow or a decade from now?