I'm wondering if it is something I ate or she is just enjoying the music that my boss is playing in her office while I file.
I look out at the runway of Miami International Airport that sits behind my my office building and wonder how much longer until it was time to go home.
The office phone rang and I answered it...it was my husband. He told me to turn on the TV.
I argued a bit telling him I was at work and couldn't turn it on.
He told me "turn it on! a plane just crashed in NYC"
I put him on hold and ran to the conference room and turned on the TV. My boss and her assistant followed behind me.
I picked up the phone again and put him on speaker phone as the image began to show on the TV - the second tower was hit.
There were no words.
Not from the 3 of us in the office. Not from my husband on the phone.
Tears filled our eyes. We couldn't turn away from the TV.
We did not stop watching the coverage for the rest of the day. We did not get any work done.
The news kept on - accident? no - terrorism.
The airport was closed down behind us - the hub of travel into Miami was frozen.
We were not allowed to leave the area due to our location.
The president of our company called to say that we could go home early. Nobody was working today.
We advised him that we could not leave.
The gravity of the situation hit him hard at that moment.
We couldn't tear ourselves away from the news, from the computers, from the radio - the world just stopped.
Its amazing how our memory is shaped at the moment of a tragedy. It replays in your mind as if it was yesterday.
The towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, a plane headed for the White House went down in a field.
Lives were lost. Families were shattered. War was waged.
But yet, the people of America came together. They found their spirit and sense of unity.
We are American and nobody is going to take that away from us.
We will never forget!
Where were you on this day 12 years ago?
A beautiful tribute, Krystal. I was working at an alternative newspaper in Portland, Maine. We did not have a television so we were glued to a radio. There were threats of a gunman in the city (which were false). It was very surreal.
ReplyDeleteThis gives me the chills.
ReplyDeleteI remember exactly where I was when I heard the news... I was a senior in high school, sitting in my agricultural studies class when the news was passed on to us. Everyone in our school filed into our auditorium to watch the news. As we sat there we witnessed the second tower strike, and then go down.
It is a day that is engrained forever in my/our memory.
We will never forget.
Beautiful. I keep telling my story and I hope it's not getting boring but I was in college at Rutgers University, waiting impatiently to hear how my ex-boyfriend was. He worked in the Financial District, but not until 9-10:00 am and he was late that day and his bus was turned around.
ReplyDelete