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Sept. 14, 2006 I remember all too well September 11, 2001. We had just finished milking the cows and I had gone inside to clean up before going to the local grocery/hardware store for something my husband just had to have immediately. My son came in (he was home-schooled at the time) and turned on the television. I couldn’t understand why he did this, because he turned it to the news. “Why did you do that?” I asked, because he usually turned on cartoons if we weren’t starting his lessons immediately. “I just heard a report on the radio and I wanted to see if it was on TV,” he replied. We watched in horror at the report of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center . We thought it was a fluke. My husband stuck his head in the door and asked why I hadn’t gone to the store yet. He had been in the milk house running the cleaning system and hadn’t heard the radio report. I told my son it was a terrible thing for that plane to crash like that and to go read a book or something while I was gone. I didn’t want him watching that building burn. The report was already several minutes old as the news crews had needed time to get to the building. I knew it would be on all day-it so horrible. As I drove to the store five miles away I heard the reporter on the radio, as they had broken away from regular programming, announcing what had happen and then a frantic shout as the second plane hit and terrifying realization struck all who heard or saw that it wasn’t some random, tragic accident. I had to pull over on the shoulder and take some deep breaths. I finally made it to the store for whatever it was I was supposed to be getting and the store owner was nearly in shock. He had on a different radio station, but the news was the same. We prayed together after I checked out and discussed what our country might be heading toward. We nailed it, of course, as all did who bothered to speculate. The replay was shown over and over again when I got home and I felt as if my heart flipped inside out and my stomach lurched so violently that I was sure it was no longer there. I cried. My young son cried. I couldn’t get him away from the set for anything and we did not have school that day. We watched in horrified silence as the Pentagon met a similar fate and there was a frantic search for missing flights, and then the awful news about the brave souls who went down with the plane in Pennsylvania . I finally had to turn off the television. There was no radio on for days, and hardly any television. We just couldn’t handle watching any more. Our older son preferred to be schooled in a traditional school and came home telling me how they had interrupted classes, dragging televisions into several rooms and crowding students into the different rooms to watch history unfold. Of course there was a swelling of patriotism, but businesses stayed open and factories continued to work (many did, anyhow), people reacted poorly trying to buy up all the gasoline before the prices went up. We needed fuel for our tractor so we could do the morning chores and the farm truck was running on fumes. My son was unable to get the fuel for the tractor and it took him two hours to get gasoline for the truck. He had to get it or he wouldn’t have made it home. We live in an extremely small community so it was hard to believe it took that long, but the gas station was so run over they couldn’t even answer the telephone to tell me he had made it there. As the anniversary of 9/11 approached and passed this week, it seemed everyone was rerunning movies about the events or had made new ones, or ran special news reports to remind us why we are at war. I watched one movie about Flight 93. I felt the same crushing in my heart and stomach and I couldn’t get to sleep. I still tear up at the thought, or a song, or news reminder, of that day when our country was thrown forcefully into the mire of hatred that is terrorism. I don’t think anyone will ever forget who watched the coverage then or the repeat coverage on the fifth anniversary. We won’t forget the sight of President and Mrs. Bush and the unnamed marine placing the wreath on the reflecting pool at Ground Zero in New York City , or the site of the flags in that unassuming field in Pennsylvania , one for every victim of Flight 93 as we mourned, once again, the loss of so many innocent lives. I somehow missed the coverage at the Pentagon, but I will always remember the site of flames coming from the walls and the people running around to put out the fire and check for survivors (at all locations).
God bless America and the lost lives from all over the world and their grieving families.
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