story11611.xml

story11611.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-07-12

I was at work in Marlow Heights, Maryland. We did not know that anything was going on in the office until my boss brought over to me a small hand held tv. We were watching the first tower hit in New York and I saw a second plane fly into the second tower. My boss said they were playing the footage over and I said "No, I think a second plane just hit the other tower." There was dead silence. We went from thinking, this was an accident to the reality that something bigger was happening. We pulled the big tv in from the other room. Then the Pentagon was hit. The local radio was reporting that car bombs were going off around DC. We all know someone that works in DC. We heard that the State building was hit and that a local helicopter was missing.(None of that was true) We started calling people. My mom works on base just inside the DC border. I called her and begged her to leave.It seemed that all was chaos. The news started broad casting about a plane over the Capitol that missed. My dad was working at Union Station in DC near the Capital. The news reports came in that some schools were closing. My son's school is far south of DC and is a bomb shelter, but my cousins were not so lucky. I left work, I later found out that all roads were closed around my work in that area at 11:30 A.M., I was the only one to get out for a while. I went and picked up my cousins and took them home and went and picked my son up. I went home and sat in front of the television and cried. I prayed for calm. My son, so innocent at four, was in the other room playing with his cars. I had to pull myself together. The rest of my family came home and all were accounted for. I could not help but think of the people and families that did not get that same assurance of safety. The tv showed in New York, relatives putting up pictures of people missing, looking for good news. Since that day, things have changed and we hold on to the everyday things that remain the same. We all carry emergency packs, even my son as required by his school, we stock pile food and water, (which came in handy after Isabelle), and we have an emergency meeting place in case of disaster. Every day we get up and go about our daily business, go to work, care for family, move to new houses, but somewhere in the back of my mind, lives those people who didn't make it home that day. The people on the planes, in the towers and at the pentagon. I struggle to make peace within myself sometimes about this world we live in. I look to God now more than ever and hold on to his promise of heaven, that families may be reunited forevever.