Hub Man called me from his cell phone.
Turn on the TV.
It's all I remember him saying. He may have said more, but I don't remember. He kept driving to work, and I turned on the TV.
There, with the back drop of a clear blue sky, was a burning building. I didn't know what the World Trade Towers were before then.
I watched in horror as the smoke billowed out of the broken sides.
What had happened?
An airplane? You must be joking.
How could such a thing happen?
Then the other plane hit.
Oh my God.
An accident is one thing. Your mind can grasp human error, mechanical error, those things are awful, but they are normal. These things happen.
But another plane? The world tilted on it's axis. No one could be this cruel!
My oldest son called to see if I was watching. Yes, yes.
Then it happened. While we were talking.. . . E., I said, the building is falling down.
No Mom, that's just the smoke, the smoke is really bad.....it can't fall down.
No E. the building is falling down.
I have to go..... was all he said. He had to call his men, tell them to come to work in plain clothes. Not to drive the Army vehicles, to come in their own cars. Because God only knew what was going on. He didn't want them to be targets.
There I sat, alone in my house, and then I heard it.
A wordless cry. An incomprehensible cry of pain. Some animal-like inarticulate sound.
It was me.
The horror continued. The Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania.
I rocked silently on my couch. The tears poured. All those people, all those people.
And then I spoke....
"They didn't even ask for anything."
We didn't even know what we might have done to prevent this from happening.
We didn't even know WHY it was happening. What had we done? What could we possibly have done?
The answer came later.
We existed. We existed in a way that they could not tolerate. And they were willing to kill themselves to kill us, to hurt us. Good God. Who can understand such hatred?
Nothing has been the same since that day. I saw evil that day. I might as well have been standing on the streets of New York. I was there. We all were there.
God help us, nothing will ever be the same.