Do you have any idea how freaked out I am right now???
You do. Because you are equally freaked beyond belief. Am I wrong?
Every day I wake up and totally take for granted that today is going to be just another day where I go to work... I make webpages, I hang with friends, I talk about current events, I go home, I eat dinner, I watch TV and I go to bed.
Perhaps my kids will do something to irritate me. Perhaps I will find nothing but joy with them. This morning started out sweet. Geoff got in my bed while Doug was getting ready and we shared a mom boy moment where we beeped each others' noses and laughed and had a lot of fun. It actually crossed my mind while he was there twisting the tip of my nose with his fingers that I love stuff like this and don't ever want it to end.
There is a little light in the back of my mind that gives thanks daily, like all good Episcopalians do, but it's a little nod to the Big Man. Not any sort of weeping thanks or gushing praise. Just a smile to Him to say, hey... thanks for what's good in my life.
There was probably a parent who works in New York or the Pentagon who had similar feelings about his or her life this morning.
They went to work, thinking much of the same stuff as I have listed above. The good old go in, do stuff, come home kind of routine.
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| But perhaps that person is now dead after what has happened here. |
At 9 am I was reading Boston.com when the site went down. I went to a non-news site and it loaded like lightning. One of my coworkers popped her head in and told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Then another coworker came in while we were talking and said another plane had crashed into it.
We tried to get news on websites, but none of them would load. Someone in the office was listening to the radio and confirmed that all sorts of shit was going down. We all decided to go to the fitness center because they have cable tv down there.
They had three TVs going with three different stations. They were showing close up and wide view angles of the two most recognizable structures in the American skyline consciousness. Both buildings belching smoke, flames, gaping holes, and a city behind them wondering what the hell just happened.
I started to hyperventilate and had to leave the room.
See, I'm from New York. As much as I hate to admit it, I grew up with the television news showing me the skyline every day from sweeping glorious angles. I remember the buildings when they were being constructed. Early in my relationship with Doug I took him to the top of one of the buildings and we have a cute picture of us, both skinny hippy kids with crazy hair (Doug had on a pink tyedye Grateful Dead shirt) and we were cute and young.
I'm incredibly disturbed by this event, on so many levels, but the one that is tearing my heart out is that I have only been up there a handfull of times, and, I never took my kids.
I prefer the observation deck of the Empire State building for the view because it is smack in the middle of midtown. But the WTC was so cool. It was so tall. You felt like you were the statue of liberty yourself, looking out onto the ocean and then behind you having the land of opportunity.
When all this intitally happened and other shit started going down, like the plane crashing at the Pentagon and at Camp David, I was even more freaked out. But when the first tower in NY actually collapsed, sending debris for blocks, that's when I started to really freak out over here.
It began to dawn on me that this piece of my life, this corner of my memory is vanishing. Then the second one fell. All I could think of was the NYC news opening segments, with the swooping vistas of the glorious city. All that will have to be reshot. Sans Twin Towers. And on top of that, hundreds of people dead and hundreds in peril at the base of the complex. They're all trapped on an island that is literally impossible to escape from once shit like this goes down.
So that's upsetting enough, but, what has me super fucked up here is that I never took my daughter up to see the view.
I had always taken for granted that those two buildings would be there. That has me totally upset. We've had many an opportunity, don't get me wrong. We've taken Jessica to the city. We just usually leave it to last on the thing to do and either find the place has just closed (like 11pm) or she's to damn dogshit tired after we've run her around NYC. So she'll never get that view. Never see that angle. Never notice how beautiful New York harbor is from the bottom end of the island.
And I have to get through the rest of the day here. I'm stressed and worried about what is going to happen next. It's almost 1pm now and things have kind of calmed down a bit. I haven't checked the news in about an hour because Deb had us pull up Oracle and look up emergency contact numbers on about 50 people from all of our company currently traveling in the USA. Some were on American Airline flights, we just have to figure out where to and when, and if they are okay. So we looked everyone up, and half of them don't even have a fucking home number listed so we can't call a spouse or something in inquire on their whereabouts or whether or not the employee has checked in. I can't believe people would be that negligent.
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| Can you IMAGINE this shit. I mean, look at this guy in the tie screaming his fucking HEAD off. Oh MY GOD. How horrible is this? Just walking to work, gonna get a coffee, then this plume of smoke and debris comes rolling down the lane after a rocking explosion? This is the stuff of Hollywood. This is like a movie. This is just unfuckingreal. |
Anyway, I'm going to take a short walk, breathe, and find out what's going on next. I'm sure tonight I'll be soaking in the evening news, trying to figure all this out, and I'll have more to say tomorrow. But for now, I'm not amused.
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