I miss him, my Daddy, who shared my sense of humor. Who seemed to know what I was thinking. Who definitely "got" me.
And I miss her. My champion. My hero. My prayer warrior. My encourager.
Heaven got the better part of this deal.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Still mourning.
I miss him, my Daddy, who shared my sense of humor. Who seemed to know what I was thinking. Who definitely "got" me.
And I miss her. My champion. My hero. My prayer warrior. My encourager.
Heaven got the better part of this deal.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
September sunrise
Septembers in the Colorado Desert deliver the most spectacular sunrises. Moisture from Arizona’s monsoon season hangs over the eastern horizon, the perfect canvas for the rising sun. Fingers of light stretch across the skyline, reintroducing the star around which our world revolves. Purples and pinks give way to hues of orange so vibrant they are almost painful in their beauty.
It is such a sunrise that greets me Sept. 11, 2001. The paper was an afternoon delivery then, and for several months out of the year sunrises were part of the seven-minute (if the stoplights cooperate) commute to work. Turning the corner east onto Adams Avenue, I marvel at the brilliance filling the windshield. What a great way to start the workday, I remember thinking.
That was the last positive thought of the day.
It took a few seconds for the images, at first televised and then delivered by satellite to our newsfeed, to sink in. A plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where workers were settling into their workday. The explosion sends shockwaves through the tower and throughout the nation. Twelve minutes later a second plane hits the South Tower.
We watch in horror as the TV in our publisher’s office delivers non-stop coverage and speculation. Stories trickle in on the AP wire, tersely worded at first, becoming more elaborate and detailed as the minutes pass.
I call my husband at home as our second son, then a high school sophomore, and his sister, a 9-year-old fourth-grader, get ready for school.
“Turn on the TV,” I tell him. “What channel?” he asks. “Doesn’t matter. Any of them,” is my reply. I remember this 10-year-old conversation as if it were this morning.
A third jet plows into the Pentagon. Twelve minutes pass and the South Tower collapses; 25 minutes later, so does the North Tower. And then the news comes, an hour to the minute after the attack on the South Tower, that a plane has slammed into a Pennsylvania field.
As the morning unfolds and the rest of the staff arrive, decisions are made on how to cover these attacks. The day’s paper is too small, and we bump up its size and buckle down to do our jobs, stuffing horror and fear and their accompanying bile into corners to be dealt with later.
The publisher decides to do a special section after the daily is printed so we can justly chronicle this morning that mirrors that other “day which will live in infamy” nearly 60 years before.
The rest of the day is a blur of text and images. Revision after revision of AP stories, updated, tweaked, resent. We scour them for fresh news as any inkling of hope in finding survivors dwindles.
With the click of a mouse the now-iconic images of terror fill the computer screen: of fireballs and smoke and people plunging past office windows; of first responders pouring into buildings, climbing stairwells to their deaths as terrified office workers descend, some to safety. Ash is everywhere in these images now so familiar to us all. Images of men and women in office attire, peering with haunting, shocked eyes through soot-covered faces, of fire trucks crushed by falling debris, of the cavernous crater where two enormous skyscrapers stood mere hours before; of emergency workers waiting at hospitals for the rescued victims who will never come, of family members and horrified New Yorkers filling parks with makeshift memorials and pictures of the missing.
Hundreds, thousands of images, springing to life one click at a time. Numbness sinks in. Afternoon gives way to evening. The sun has long set before this day’s tasks are completed.
Home, finally, and tears dammed throughout the day flow freely. No more images, please, especially of people freefalling those scores of stories to their deaths. Of the hopelessness and terror that surely filled their souls before they leapt. No TV. No Internet. Just silence. Audio, visual, mental silence. Please.
“What do you remember about 9/11?”
“How has 9/11 impacted your life?”
We’ve asked those questions dozens of times over the years, several times this week.
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are etched indelibly into our collective national psyche, having changed forever so many things about the way we live.
And I’ve never looked at another September sunrise without remembering this one.
It is such a sunrise that greets me Sept. 11, 2001. The paper was an afternoon delivery then, and for several months out of the year sunrises were part of the seven-minute (if the stoplights cooperate) commute to work. Turning the corner east onto Adams Avenue, I marvel at the brilliance filling the windshield. What a great way to start the workday, I remember thinking.
That was the last positive thought of the day.
It took a few seconds for the images, at first televised and then delivered by satellite to our newsfeed, to sink in. A plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where workers were settling into their workday. The explosion sends shockwaves through the tower and throughout the nation. Twelve minutes later a second plane hits the South Tower.
We watch in horror as the TV in our publisher’s office delivers non-stop coverage and speculation. Stories trickle in on the AP wire, tersely worded at first, becoming more elaborate and detailed as the minutes pass.
I call my husband at home as our second son, then a high school sophomore, and his sister, a 9-year-old fourth-grader, get ready for school.
“Turn on the TV,” I tell him. “What channel?” he asks. “Doesn’t matter. Any of them,” is my reply. I remember this 10-year-old conversation as if it were this morning.
A third jet plows into the Pentagon. Twelve minutes pass and the South Tower collapses; 25 minutes later, so does the North Tower. And then the news comes, an hour to the minute after the attack on the South Tower, that a plane has slammed into a Pennsylvania field.
As the morning unfolds and the rest of the staff arrive, decisions are made on how to cover these attacks. The day’s paper is too small, and we bump up its size and buckle down to do our jobs, stuffing horror and fear and their accompanying bile into corners to be dealt with later.
The publisher decides to do a special section after the daily is printed so we can justly chronicle this morning that mirrors that other “day which will live in infamy” nearly 60 years before.
The rest of the day is a blur of text and images. Revision after revision of AP stories, updated, tweaked, resent. We scour them for fresh news as any inkling of hope in finding survivors dwindles.
With the click of a mouse the now-iconic images of terror fill the computer screen: of fireballs and smoke and people plunging past office windows; of first responders pouring into buildings, climbing stairwells to their deaths as terrified office workers descend, some to safety. Ash is everywhere in these images now so familiar to us all. Images of men and women in office attire, peering with haunting, shocked eyes through soot-covered faces, of fire trucks crushed by falling debris, of the cavernous crater where two enormous skyscrapers stood mere hours before; of emergency workers waiting at hospitals for the rescued victims who will never come, of family members and horrified New Yorkers filling parks with makeshift memorials and pictures of the missing.
Hundreds, thousands of images, springing to life one click at a time. Numbness sinks in. Afternoon gives way to evening. The sun has long set before this day’s tasks are completed.
Home, finally, and tears dammed throughout the day flow freely. No more images, please, especially of people freefalling those scores of stories to their deaths. Of the hopelessness and terror that surely filled their souls before they leapt. No TV. No Internet. Just silence. Audio, visual, mental silence. Please.
“What do you remember about 9/11?”
“How has 9/11 impacted your life?”
We’ve asked those questions dozens of times over the years, several times this week.
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are etched indelibly into our collective national psyche, having changed forever so many things about the way we live.
And I’ve never looked at another September sunrise without remembering this one.
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