Not a post-it today, but a Facebook memory.
My husband and I had just moved into a different house. As I remember it, we didn’t have cable. But perhaps we had local channels only. Because my husband distinctly remembers watching the second tower fly into the South tower of the World Trade Center. This would have been at 0902 EST. We were living in Sonoma, and it would have been 0602 PST. Our memories do not match on this one.
What does match is that my mother in law called and woke us just as it was getting light outside. To tell us about the terrorist attack. To tell us to turn on the television.
The second plane hit the South Tower just after we talked to her.
And the plane that hit the Pentagon shortly thereafter.
Time does stop.
It feels otherworldly.
The closest thing that current day me can compare it to is the first month of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
But that day and those weeks felt never ending, and compressed at the same time.
I listened to the local NPR radio station while I unpacked boxes.
And my husband went to work.
After I finished the boxes I wandered over to the hospital, to see if they needed any hands.
This was when we lived a block and a half away from the hospital.
I was new to my RN license and I wanted to help.
I was convinced that there would be an influx of patients with chest pain.
I don’t know why I thought that.
Perhaps that the pain of an attack on US soil would prompt it.
These 21 years later have seen war, and more war.
And now domestic terrorism.
Mass shootings weekly.
Nowhere feels safe.
Where does it end?
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 