Sometimes, the remembering happens faster than the forgetting.
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It was not your run-of-the-mill trip, as I’d hoped. By early September 2001, I was just weeks into a new job with the New Mexico Pediatric Society and headed to the first of many work trips; this one to Washington DC for a child healthcare conference. Having found a relatively cheap flight, if I went early and stayed later, and since I’d only been to Washington DC once, I figured I would take the opportunity to be a bit of a tourist.
On the way to the airport, the New Mexico State Fair parade almost stymied my plans. There was no passage across Central Ave. and I was at risk of missing my flight; which at the time felt welcome, as I was experiencing one of my first panic attacks. Though I had little to be concerned about, I just didn’t want to go. But, I made it, for better or worse.
I arrived in DC on a Saturday evening with a conference beginning two days later. With those days to myself, I discovered I was exhausted and hardly able to motivate myself to explore that history-filled town. That first day all I could manage was resting in my huge hotel suite, with a separate sitting room even, and scanning the TV options. I landed on a PBS program called “On Dying” with Bill Moyers. I was immediately engrossed, both by my curiosity and by a bit of horror; I’d never really contemplated death quite like this program was asking of me. I binged before binging was a thing.
The next day, navigating the clean easy train system, I surprised myself and decided to visit Arlington Cemetery; it was so stark, sterile even, with its identical and meticulously organized headstones, that the gravity of what I was viewing was squandered on me. Honestly, death felt looming and ever-present.
Then, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 at 8:50 a.m. I woke up in my hotel near the White House realizing I had only 10 minutes to get my free continental carbs breakfast before heading off to the conference. I rushed downstairs to arrive in the small lobby turned breakfast room. Everyone was gawking at the television, so I joined as we all watched as an airplane hit a tower in New York City on live television. I never made it to the conference, choosing rather to stay in the lobby as “9/11” unfolded on screens in front of me and on the streets just feet away. We watched D.C. office workers flee the area, carrying their shoes in stocking feet; handbags and briefcases getting heavier by the minute. People were tired, weary, worried, ragged and stunned.
Later that evening, in the midst of this tragedy, I met John and his wife, Jen. They needed a room that night as their efforts to get home to their children, and John, a firefighter, to get to work in Manhattan, were fruitless. Everyone believed, naïvely, that customers booked into our rooms the night we’d planned to leave would arrive – but we were actually stuck in D.C. – and the hotel staff wouldn’t allow John and Jen to remain in their room. As for me? Well, I’d arranged to be a tourist after my conference. And that was fortunate, as my over-sized suite was more than large enough for us all. They stayed in the bedroom while I slept on the couch in front of the TV. We stayed up late into the night.
That evening I saw snipers atop buildings nearby while eating Italian at a lone open restaurant; the streets were empty. It was disquietingly quiet.
After much uncertainty – and what must have been minutes, but felt like hours, on a hotel pay phone, where I could use my long distance calling card Mom made sure I always had – I was able to get out of there on an Amtrak. It took an excruciatingly slow, nearly 72 hour train ride from D.C. to Albuquerque to get back to my cozy apartments and kitties. Gratefully, halfway home, I was fortunate to have a layover to visit Uncle Joe for about 30 minutes. He was a striving theater actor in Chicago at the time.
There were a lot of unknowns, the train would randomly pause on the track in the middle of soybean fields and we had no "new" news. I listened to a man describe his harrowing eye-witness story of being in Manhattan that day as darkness descended on the windows of an office he was in when dust and debris blackened the room. He later left his pillow for my use for the remainder of my journey. I witnessed people care for each other and listen closely to each other's stories. I was relieved that we didn’t have iPhones and that I did not have access to much media in those early days. Unlike my parents and partner, whom I think experienced trauma by proxy, I wasn’t subjected to persistent replays of the footage. I did however have another panic attack while attempting to go to the State Fair later that week. Instead, I went home.
John and Jen's presence and friendship in the short 24 hour period we shared will never be forgotten. Instead of feeling alone that day, I felt more connected, by the power and generosity of humanity that a charged event manifests. John returned to NYC after getting Jen safely home to their children and we remain in touch these 22 years later.
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This morning while watering the yard, I heard the distinct buzz of airplanes and looked up to see seven airplanes flying over the house in formation.
It was 8:50 a.m. and I remembered.