And it Was Such a Beautiful Day

It’s almost 5:00 in the morning of September 11, 2011 and I cannot sleep. I almost feel that it’s going to happen all over again and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Let me bring you back ten years ago to that day from my perspective. My husband and I were on our annual vacation to Cape Cod. I woke up, grabbed a shower and made my breakfast to eat out in the backyard of our rented cottage. As soon as I got out there, though, I realized that it was too hot. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky and it was already about 80 degrees at 9:00 I the morning. So I came back inside where it was cooler, and put on the television to watch the weather report. I saw an image that confused me. It was the image of one of the Twin Towers, completely shrouded in smoke. Dan Rather was saying something about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I called my husband from the next room and said, “A small plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers. How awful.” I also noticed the now ubiquitous headline crawl along the bottom of the television screen. I started to read it, but that was long before we were used to watching an image and reading the crawl at the same time, so I soon gave up. From what I was able to glean from the crawl, it appeared that a Cessna or other small plane had gone off course and crashed into one of the Towers. We started talking about the time when a small plane crashed into the Empire State Building. We felt terrible for the pilot and any passengers, and hoped that there wasn’t too much damage to the Tower.

Concern turned to shock, though, as I heard Dan Rather say that the second Tower appeared to be in danger of collapse. I thought that it must have been a terrible jolt for one little plane to cause the other Tower to be at risk. Then I said, “Wait a minute. There’s something wrong. I can’t see both Towers. Where’s the other Tower?’ My husband, Jim, thought that it must have been hidden by all the smoke. I started to drink my coffee and eat my bagel. Then I watched the Tower collapse before my eyes. I said, “They’ve imploded the Towers. Why would they implode the Towers?” Then I heard Dan Rather say, “And the second Tower has collapsed.”

I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. I could barely breathe. I tried to speak but no words would come out. When I was finally able to mutter something I said, “Those Towers hold fifty thousand people. Fifty thousand people.” I could feel the bile rise into my throat and I ran to the bathroom to vomit. When I came back out, Jim told me that there were several other planes in the air which appeared to be heading towards Washington, D.C.. One had reportedly crashed into Camp David. And then I knew. I whispered, “We’re under attack. My God, we’re under attack.”

As we watched, sketchy reports began coming in. The White House had been hit. No, it was Camp David after all. I asked, “Where is the President?” but Jim didn’t know. No one knew. Time stopped. My husband’s face was ashen. I asked, “What’s happening?” and he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Who could have done something like this?” I choked out the words, “Bin Laden. It could only be Bin Laden.”

We stared at the television screen for hours, too shocked to cry and barely able to speak. We saw people jumping out of windows. Jumping out of 110 story windows. I wondered if they were showing the same footage in New York. I wanted to call my parents who lived about 25 miles north of New York but I didn’t want to tie up the phone lines for the emergency workers. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go to New York, my beloved New York, the city of my birth, the city of my ancestors’ birth. I wanted to do – I don’t know what. Help rescue people? Help clean up? Help somehow? Jim said that we needed to stay put until we had more information. I felt the need to be with people. I needed to go to the beach. Jim said, “Let’s go do something normal for a while. I can't stand watching this anymore. Let’s go play mini-golf.” I didn’t want to play mini-golf. I wanted to go to the beach. I wanted to be with people. I wanted to go home. But we went to play mini-golf. Like two zombies, we bought our clubs and asked the man at the desk if he had heard. We told him we were from New York. He laughed and said, “I bet you’re glad you’re not there now.” I said, “No. I wish I were there now, helping my City.” He looked confused. We played mini-golf. Then we drove around aimlessly. We found ourselves in Chatham, wandering around. We stopped into the only store which was still open. The owner was about to close. She said that a man had come in earlier, also stunned and wandering around. He said that he worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and was on vacation. He said he had nothing to go back to. Everyone he worked with was dead. We drove somewhere else; I don’t even remember where. A store. Maybe a department store. I must have bought something. I don’t know what. While I was on line, the two women ahead of me were talking. One said to the other that her husband worked at Otis Air Force Base and they had gotten the order to scramble.

As we drove back to our cottage, we saw hastily made, hand-written signs for a candlelight ceremony on the beach that night. I asked Jim if he’d like to go. He said “No.” We put the television back on when we got in. Someone was saying that there was no truth to the rumors that fighter jets had scrambled to try to intercept the jets that were flying into buildings. We learned that the Pentagon had been hit, but apparently the White House had not. There was another plane in Pennsylvania that had crashed. We finally managed to put a call in to my parents. My father said that there had been an enormous jet flying low over their neighborhood, flanked by F-16’s. My father would know because he had been in the Army Air Corps during WWII, and in the Air Force Reserves for some years afterwards. I told him that we had heard on the news that the President had ordered Air Force One to fly over the World Trade Center site, and that he must have seen Air Force One. Then I asked him if this was what it was like when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He said, “This is worse.” At that point, I began to tremble because that was the first time in my life I had heard fear in my father’s voice. He said that they could see the smoke all the way from lower Manhattan, that fighter plans were flying overhead and they were terrified. I told him that I wanted to come home and help with the rescue effort. He said, “Don’t, Sue. You’ll destroy your lungs. Don’t go down there.” I told him that I loved him and would call again the next day. I could hear a catch in his voice as he said, “Love you, too.”

I went to the candlelight ceremony on the beach by myself that night. It was beautiful, I guess. Someone handed me a candle and someone else handed me a rose. We lit the candles, said some kind of prayers and then cast the roses into the ocean. Someone was filming for the local news. He asked me where I was from and I said “New York.” He couldn’t say another word.

******

Two weeks later we were back in New York. Jim had gone back to work and I went to the City. I could only take the train down to 14th Street, so I walked the rest of the way downtown. It looked like a war zone. It was a war zone. Tanks and jeeps were in the streets, National Guard were everywhere. I didn’t recognize anything. Everything was closed, boarded up, destroyed. I asked a National Gaurdswoman where I could go to pay my respects. She said, “You can’t get any closer than Trinity Church, ma’am. It’s not safe.” I thanked her and tried to find my way to Trinity Church amid the smoke and ash. I kept looking up, as if I expected to see the Towers. I kept closing my eyes, then looking up, hoping that it had been a dream. But all I saw was smoke and ash. When I got to Trinity Church, dozens of people lined the barricades, looking in the direction of the Towers. I fell to my knees. They were gone. They were really gone. Some people sobbed, some people spoke in hushed tones. Most people prayed.

The most vivid memory I have of that day is the smell. As I got closer and closer to the site, I kept smelling something horrible. The ash became so dense that I had to cover my nose and mouth with a cloth. A wave of revulsion hit me as I realized that I was smelling still-burning, decomposing bodies, and that the ash that I was breathing in had once been three thousand human beings.

After a time – I don’t know how long – I went into the only shop that was still open that far downtown; the Au Bon Pain Pastry shop. I ordered a coffee and a chocolate croissant. Nothing has ever tasted so good before or since. Amid the destruction, the rubble, the ash and smoke, life was going on. The clerk told me that they had stayed open continuously, making gallon after gallon of coffee for the First Responders.

******

It has now been ten years since that horrific day. As I said at the top, I keep feeling that I can someone stop it from happening. That I know now what’s coming so I can warn someone. But it already happened. It happened a long time ago. It happened a moment ago. And it was such a beautiful day.