Remembering September 11th—Twenty-One Years Later

The kindergarten bus was late. I peered up at the clear blue sky and held my oldest daughter’s hand at the bus stop, trying not to appear anxious as I obsessively checked my watch. It was my turn to drive the preschool carpool and the timing couldn’t have been worse. I had an amniocentesis scheduled later that day, so I needed to move fast getting to and from the school across town. When the bus finally arrived, I sprinted home to get ready for Round 2 of my hectic morning.

Buckled in their booster chairs in the back seat, my younger daughter and her girlfriend giggled as they squirmed to break free. The drop-off-line outside the school moved slowly and just as the aides approached my car, my cell phone rang.

“Are you listening to the radio?” My neighbor’s booming voice overpowered the girls’ laughter.

“Is that my Mommy?” Her daughter squealed as she reached for the phone. “I wanna go home!”

After a few moments of chaos, I was alone in the car and finally able to talk with my neighbor as I drove home. She had just heard that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. We reminisced about The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and briefly questioned whether the media was playing a sick joke.

I re-entered my house shortly before 9 am, frantically interrupting my husband who was on a conference call in his office. We turned on the television just in time to see Flight 175 strike the South Tower and remained glued to the news coverage long enough to witness that tower collapse. This was definitely no joke.

Mindful of the time, I struggled with where to focus my attention. While America appeared to be under attack, I was still four months pregnant and worried about the results of the genetic test I had learned about earlier in the month. There was a one in four chance that our third child would be born with a disability. We wanted to prepare ourselves so we could tell the rest of our family what to expect. I had therefore reluctantly agreed to the invasive procedure that I’d been dreading for weeks. That was no joke either.

By the time we left for the clinic, two other plane crashes had been reported, one at the Pentagon and another in a field south of Pittsburgh. Rumors were swirling about al Qaeda and the terrorist group’s leader, Osama bin Laden. We were on information overload but trying not to let it totally derail us.

Forging ahead with our own plans for the day, my husband and I locked hands inside the cold and sterile procedure room, waiting to learn more about the health of our unborn child. I cried as a long needle was inserted into my belly — afraid for myself and my baby and overwhelmed by what was happening a short 500 miles away from my home.

The medical staff barely said a word to put us at ease. Everyone was distracted by the radio broadcast playing in the background. I prayed they were paying attention to where that needle was headed. Looking back, I should have asked them to turn it off, but my husband and I were just as captivated.

“You wanna know the baby’s gender?” The technician eventually asked.

My husband and I glanced at each other and nodded in tandem. We had already discussed our desired response.

“It’s a boy!”

My husband’s eyes immediately welled up with tears — happy to be getting a son. And by the end of our visit, our worries over the genetic test had been quashed. Everything looked normal and the only news we’d be breaking to our daughters is that they’d be getting a brother.

My mind shifted back to the larger stage. What would “normal” look like for the life we were about to bring into this world? And for the rest of us? At that moment, I didn’t know that nearly 3,000 lives would be lost that day, including a college classmate of ours. Learning about the heroes and villains of September 11, 2001, during the months that followed was almost as mystifying as getting to know the little boy growing inside of me.

Our son is 20 now. Every February on his birthday, I’m struck by the significance of him sharing the spotlight with the world that September day. Side by side, hope and fear remind us to take nothing for granted—for every celebration of life, a loss leaves another grieving.

It’s in the unexpected—anywhere between great joy and extreme tragedy—that we often discover the moments that define us. Moments that we’ll always remember and should never forget.

The original version of this story was published on Medium. Link to the original version: https://shppoole.medium.com/remembering-that-day-twenty-years-ago-f0ac0ab9ff11