First it was a phone call from my bff, Cathy, who told me a plane at hit one of the World Trade Centers. A building I was in once. I could not fathom what she was saying. Then the second one hit.
Twenty five years ago the internet wasn't what it is now - I remember my co-worker, Oliver trying to see it on our computers but CNN was frozen, TMI coming in at once.
The radio went to just reporting about what was going on as best as it could.
The Tower falls, people run.
I was worried about Cathy's niece, but she said that she doesn't work in that area. We later found out she was there, just got off the subway when the second one hit. She got out of there and was ok.
At work I felt stuck, I cried with my other bff, Annette. Not knowing what was happening was horrifying. We could only get bits and pieces of what was going on. The phone system to Washington wasn't working. There was another plane it hit the Pentagon,
The fourth plane never hit its target, the passengers heroically overcame the highjackers and they crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
My son worked for Exxon at the time, and my DIL at the time worked as a teacher. I couldn't get a hold of either for the longest time - they lived in Virginia but were very close to DC.
When I got home that night, all I could do was watch it on TV, by this time Parke had seen it over and over and didn't want to watch it. But whenever I could, I did.
How do you recover from that, we did, we flew our flags, we gathered in our places of worship and we prayed. We came together, we were the United States of America. One people, one country and we were proud.
I could say something about our politics today, but let's not tarnish the memory of those who died and the first responders.
Let's remember how we came together.
and that's Another day in Catasauqua
