2001

I was at Steve's. He was getting ready for work, showering, shaving, the standard routine. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, flipping through channels, killing time. One local station was showing some story with fire engines...the location wasn't familiar, so I changed channels. Next one was showing some other emergency...channel change. Third station, another emergency. Then it clicked: all the channels were showing the same thing. Switch to CNN.

Holy shit. The World Trade Center is on fire. There's been some sort of explosion. Yell to Steve, still in the bathroom [his family is in New York]. Keep watching.

Wait, this just in. A plane hit the tower...that is the cause of the explosion. Some horrible accident. No word yet on what happened. Update Steve. Keep watching.

Steve comes out, wrapped in a towel. We move to the living room, turn on the big TV, watch for updates.

Oh fuck. A plane has hit the second tower. It's not an accident. Reports coming in about the Pentagon being hit, another plane going down in a field somewhere.

Stunned silence. I lean into Steve, he squeezes my hand. We sit, watching, numb, confused, not quite sure what to think...it hasn't really sunk in yet. Local newscast is asking people to stay indoors if they can, stay off the phone as much as possible, keep roads clear, in case this gets bigger. All flights are grounded. Steve calls in to work; they are telling people to just stay home today, don't bother coming in. He tries to call his parents, finally gets through...everyone is okay. I call mine...they were worried, since the flights were California bound and they didn't know if I might be on one. I keep it short...love you, I'm fine, gotta keep lines open for everyone else.

Back to the couch. Back to the news, scanning the stations. Click: ashes raining down. Click: emergency workers carrying bloody bodies. Click: a woman is crying. Click: the impact of the second plane. Click: the collapse of a tower. Click: more footage of the impact. Click: a person jumping/falling from the tower. Click, click, click. We turn the volume down and just sit there for a while. Not sure what we said..."oh my god" and "what the hell?" and "who?" and "why?" and "holy shit" were in there, I'm sure. Eloquent? No. But honest.

I don't remember much about the next days and weeks. We saw that footage over and over and over again. Americans were realizing that we weren't safe...suddenly we were dealing with things that we hadn't really had to before, not on this scale. We'd been fairly fortunate up until then. Much of the world had been living with this fear and sense of violation for years, decades, centuries...and now so were we.

I donated blood, quietly, not telling anyone. It was nothing compared to what others were doing...that day created heroes, big and small, public and private. People became a bit nicer for a while, and we united in a way that crossed borders, boundaries, races, creeds, income levels.

That unity wouldn't last...but it was there when we needed it.