The Day the Towers Fell

Where were you when the Twin Towers were struck on September 11, 2001, at 7:14 AM CDT? Do you even remember what you did that day if you were even born? I remember vividly what I was doing that day, and I will never forget seeing those Towers falling as I watched the news.

I had just fed my oldest, who was then three years old, and she was watching cartoons on PBS after her meal. I had gone into the kitchen to bake myself a lovely chocolate cake for my birthday, which was the next day, while I cleaned the kitchen of the breakfast mess. The day was excellent, beautiful, and sunny where we lived. It was a great start to a wonderful day, or so I remember thinking.

As I worked, I heard my daughter cussing up a storm (kids will repeat anything). So I went into the living room to see why she was upset, and that’s when I noticed that her cartoons were interrupted by a live newscast. What I saw on the TV chilled me more than anything else. The newscaster said that the US was under attack, and airplanes were flying into the Twin Towers, and later on, they said the Pentagon was also hit.

I checked the other station (we only had ABC and PBS at the time, way before Roku was even invented.) to see what was happening. I couldn’t stop watching the news for the rest of the day. I remember I nearly brunt my cake, and the feel of my daughter’s small arms around my neck, and her sweet voice as she said, “It’ll be ok, Mama.”

She asked a couple of times if she could watch a show, but nothing was on but the emergency newscast, and I told her that she could watch the VCR tapes later that evening. She was an excellent toddler; she just played with her blocks and toys.

The shock turned into fear as I watched the news and my daughter played. I was scared because I wondered what kind of life my daughter would have, especially with the uncertainty of who had attacked the US on our soil. Never in history had an attack happened on the mainland in the degree of carnage shown on the news.

No one on the news knew who had orchestrated the attack. Our President was not even sure who had attacked us. We were a nation in complete disbelief.

Many have said later that what happened that day was fake news. I don’t know; what I saw on the broadcast looked real. I had never seen newscasters as scared as I felt that day, before or since. I think everyone who says it is fake wishes it were fake.

I watched as people were led away from the wreckage. I watched as people told what they had seen when the planes struck. I watched as the news announced another aircraft was heading towards Washington, DC. I could not take my eyes off the TV.

That's all we talked about when my husband came in for lunch. We watched the news and tried to discuss our shock.

The following month, the news discussed nothing but the events of that fateful day. It became such a momentous moment in our nation’s history that now it is commonly known as 9/11 or Patriot’s Day. It is a day that will forever mark a change in the US as a nation, for many things changed due to these attacks.

Every year, just like the year that the crisis happened, my birthday is overshadowed by the memory of that horrendous day.