Dear Diary . . . day by day

Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 - Black Tuesday

The phone rings, waking us up at 7:50 in the morning, 10 minutes before the alarm goes off. I let the machine get it, and I hear Sherman:
"If you haven't gone to work yet, please turn on the news."
I pee, crawl back in beside Tim, saying, "I'm curious." "But not curious enough to go see?" "I guess not; I'm tired."
I ponder over what it could be. Sherman won the lottery? That wouldn't be on the news on every channel. Sherman discovered the cure for cancer? Probably something more all-encompassing. Tim came up with my favorite theory about the same time I did: "Maybe they really discovered aliens."
That would've been cool.
I think I knew, deep down, that it had to be horrible, and I was putting off finding out what it was. It was 10 minutes before I got up to fiddle with our horrible TV reception, promising Tim that I would come back and report. By the time I got it up and running, Tim was sitting on the couch next to me.
I just leaned into him and cried.
Holly called me before I could call her. She works in the Bank of America building in SF, and they closed down all such landmarks in the City. Her housemates were being mean to her, and I told her to come over and hang out in the East Bay with me, but she was afraid to get on BART (which was running extra trains so everyone could go home). I called Mom to let her know Holly was home and ok and chatted with her for awhile. She came up with the theory that the plane bound for SFO that crashed in rural PA was meant for some other American landmark and that the pilot was a hero. She told me this an hour before they were saying that on the news, and it made me cry some more.
I called everyone I knew who had friends or family in or near New York. David's father is in NYC and is fine but will probably be helping in the city for quite some time because he's a doctor. Susan's family is all accounted for and most of her friends are too. John, who we were supposed to have dinner with this week, is safe with his wife in Denver; they were in the air about the same time, flying from Washington DC to SFO.
I sat in front of the TV, riveted, wearing my glasses that make my eyes hurt, for over 3 hours. The second plane went again and again behind the second tower and exploded a few seconds later. All four planes were bound for CA and it's assumed this was chosen because they'd have tons and tons of fuel aboard. Thank god the TV stations had the good taste to show the Palestinians dancing in the streets only once. It was sickening.
I finally fell asleep in front of the TV. Susan woke me up and after chatting with her, I went and took a nap. Now I'm listening to KFOG, which is playing rather mellow, soothing music and no commercials. The announcer periodically explains they're trying for normalcy and occasionally they give extra, new tidbits of information. I appreciate the attempt at normalcy.
It's never going to be the same again. People will ask "where were you when the twin towers went down?" the same way they asked that about JFK. Security will be stepped up to help prevent this in the future. But, really, how much can they do?
Argh. I know, I shouldn't worry about the future just yet. The skies over the Bay Area are so quiet. It's eerie. It was something I hated about living here, all the air traffic. But today I miss it.

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