It Is 9/11

It hadn't struck me yet, because it is after midnight and I was thinking it was still 9/10.

On 9/11/01, I heard on NPR "a plane has struck the World Trade Center." It sounded like a small plane. I thought "strange" and I went to vote.

In retrospect, I am glad I went to vote. There was a primary in Minnesota that day, and I like to exercise my right to vote whenever possible. But it seems particularly important that I voted then, because the right to vote and be heard is so much of what makes us American.

By the time I was back in my car and on my way to work, people were freaking out on the radio and it was very hard to understand what was happening. By the time I got to work, I only had one thought, the thought we all had "where are our planes?" I worked for a major airline. Planes were dropping out of the sky. It seemed that anything could happen next. And anything did happen as the World Trade Centers collapsed. Eventually we heard that all the planes were on the ground, and it was a relief because then we could just cope without this specter of the unknown lurking. Those few hours, when things just kept happening and it wasn't clear when or where they would stop, were very long.

The world changed that day. I am lucky; I didn't personally know anyone who died that day. But I knew a lot of people whose lives were changed. From that day, we knew our airline would have to lay people off, and a little over two weeks later it did. Good people were suddenly unemployed. We didn't know when we'd be able to fly again. We didn't know if anyone would want to fly again. I loved the airline industry when I started and I had been in it 8 years. It was getting tough before 9/11. After 9/11 it just seemed draining and hopeless. In a sense, my life changed that day, but even now I have a hard time finding the words to express it.

I wanted to try to say something more sweeping, but I don't have the words. The world changed that day.