i was in bed, half-asleep...sleeping in. I was due in just a few short weeks to have my second son, Brandon.
I heard my Dad say something as he walked down the hallway outside my bedroom door (he and my stepmom were here to help welcome baby Brandon).
"Flo, the World Trade Center...airplanes just hit it."
I couldn't really understand what he was saying, but it stirred me from sleep, and I ran out to the living room to see a clip, which to me seemed as though it couldn't be anything BUT a movie clip, though it looked far too real.
The announcers and my parents both helped drive the reality home. They had been awake longer, and obviously better informed. I was terrified and felt very vulnerable.
I remember feeling in a fog all morning, and trying to transfer the fear to a worry for my health, for the health of my baby, in order to get a grasp on the grieving for all those lives.
I found out soon that my stepmom's neice, Robin, who works for the USPS in the Trade Center, was there, but had gone outside to get something from her car, and so had been safe at one time, but no one had heard from her in hours. Her husband had seen the attack from the Staten Island Ferry as he was on his way in to Manhattan to work, himself. The ferry had turned around...I could only imagine how Joe felt leaving his wife behind, not knowing her fate.
Luckily, she made it uptown and ultimately to home, but it was many hours for her husband and young son.
We watched the news for several days solid and we were just wracked with stress. I remember feeling very angry at the fuel stations that suddenly began charging tremendous prices for fuel as a knee-jerk reaction, and wondering how they could be so greedy and add to the distress of the nation in such a way.
My husband was in Dutch Harbor at the time, and he was scheduled to fly home just a day or two before my scheduled C-section. I was certain he wouldn't make it...he himself didn't hear about the attacks until about a week later due to their isolation.
I remember wishing I'd had another week of innocence. Things have certainly changed since then.
The ensuing anthrax fears and every other concern related to the attacks probably heaped up to contribute to an unusual experience with post-partum depression. I just felt so helpless in the face of what had happened to all of those people...in the name of an extremist religion.
Liz