September 11th, 2001

The morning of September 11th, 2001 I was waiting at home for the air-conditioning repairman to keep his appointment. I was 7 months pregnant, and air-conditioning was a necessity. It wasn't often that I had a leisurely morning to get ready since I was still in the workforce at that time. Our telephone rang, and my husband told me to turn on the television, because he had just heard one of the Twin Towers had been hit by an airplane. For the next two hours, I sat riveted in front of the television, watching in horror as things unfolded before my very eyes. It was eerily ironic to me that not three weeks before, my husband and I had been in New York City visiting a close friend of mine. We had traversed into the financial district and even walked through the lobbies of the Twin Towers. My husband kept snapping shots of the towers, and my friend and I had been teasing him about taking pictures of buildings. "Whatever will we want those for?" I asked. That answer became clear only a few weeks later. My repairman didn't show, and I went to work. No one was working. Clusters of people were huddled in this cubicle or that one, trying to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. It was so surreal. Several of our employees had been out of town on business, and with airlines shutting down, they resorted to renting cars and driving across country to get home. Everyone just wanted to be with their families. That night my husband and I didn't want to be at home, so we opted to get out, only to find that nearly every business had closed. Our world had stopped, in shock, to mourn.

As I said, I was pregnant, and the terrifying thought that kept playing through my mind was, "What kind of world am I bringing this child into?" I often wonder, if these events contributed in some small part to the postpartum depression that I suffered after my first child was born. After I delivered my baby, the morning I was to be released, the nurse came in announcing there had been a plane crash and it was being investigated to determine if it was another act of terrorism. My safe haven of being in the hospital and enjoying my newborn was suddenly ripped away from me. Later, it was discovered that it was an actual accident, but those months were so very emotional for me. For my generation, it was that "JFK was shot" moment. You just remember where you were and what you were doing.

My thoughts and prayers are with those families today that suffered such a great loss. A whole country was impacted this day 8 years ago, and though some may want to forget, I don't think anyone can.