9-11 memories

 I was getting dressed for the day, going to run some errands before going to work. Watching TV while getting dressed. The Today show was almost over when the person talking suddenly stopped. Said, "something's happening." And the TV picture suddenly showed the first tower crumbling. AND THEN WE SAW ON TV THE SECOND PLANE HIT THE SECOND TOWER! 

I called my workplace and asked them to drag the TV set into the children's room (where the cable wire was), plug it in and watch what was happening. When I went into work at noon, it was still running and it ran all day and evening (the plane into the pentagon and then the plane down somewhere in Pennsylvania). My desk was about 6 feet from the TV set. People would come into the library and either stand and watch or sit on the floor and watch. 

Any town that had a tower they called a World Trade Center (Baltimore did) immediately put some sort of defense around it. For the next few years jet planes flew from the Air Force base in Delaware above our heads, down to Washington, DC and circled around it for hours to defend the capital. We attended meetings in Washington, DC knowing that it was target number one for any terrorist. scary times. We expected more attacks, that never came. The suspense was killing us. We religiously watched the news.

I was scheduled to fly to the National Storytelling Festival the next month and kept waiting and waiting for when the government would allow planes to fly again -- they opened up for flying just a few days before I was scheduled to fly. But airports had changed. Nervious teen age soldiers with big guns were guarding everywhere and threatening anyone who stepped a little bit out of line. I could tell they were afraid of the masses of people surging through the airport, considering us all terrorists.   

A few months later as we were waiting at the airport for my daughter to fly home for Christmas, we no longer could sit comfortably at the plane gate. We were all crowded in front of the security gates, waiting for our relatives to walk to us. At one point my 3 or 4 year old granddaughter got very restless and began dancing. She danced out into the space between us and the boys with army rifles -- and they aimed their guns at her and shouted at her. Of course she couldn't understand and they threatened us when we started into the empty space to go get her. So, we had to stand still and entice her to come back to us. A scary time was had by all. (and don't get me started about the having to take your shoes off a few years later -- with NO seating on the other side to enable us older people to put our tie shoes back on. grrrrrr.)