We will all remember where we were and what we were doing the morning of September 11, 2001. In my case, I was ridiculously pregnant with Little Man. We turned on our radio in the car as we were dropping off Trout at the sitter so we could go to our OB appointment - Little Man's c-section was scheduled for the following day, and we had our "Check You Out Before We Cut You Open" visit that morning. BigDaddyFish turned on a local rock radio station, 98 Rock, and they were discussing the first plane hitting the Trade Center. They are notoriously NOT serious on that station, and at first we thought it was some kind of sick joke. Then we thought it was a horrible accident. We dropped Trout off and headed to the OB - on the way we continued to listen to 98 Rock, and it became clear that it wasn't a joke, mostly because they never went to a commercial and continued to be serious. Then the second plane hit, and we became terrified. We arrived at the OBs office, and they had a radio station on in the waiting room, which wasn't normal. While there, the plane hit the Pentagon. BigDaddyFish at that time worked at the Navy Yard in SouthEast DC, not too far from the Pentagon, and he would have been on lockdown if he had been there. That probably would have put me into labor. BDF kept saying he was going into work after our appointment - I kept begging him not to. They announced that they were shutting down 395, the road in front of the Pentagon, and only then did BDF decide that he wasn't going in to work. There was so much chaos and we were terrified - there were reports of other planes coming toward DC, and reports that the military was shooting down planes. Our house is right under the flight path from DC to Camp David, and we didn't know if they were evacuating some people there or not. I was concerned about someone shooting down a helicopter on our house. While I was in the examining room being checked, we heard on the radio that Flight 93 had gone down, and in the chaos of the time, it was announced that it was shot down. Finally BDF seemed outwardly concerned. We finished up at the OB with a quick review of the instructions for the next day, understanding that my OB, who is a trained field doctor, may be called away to go help with the rescue effort and might not be able to deliver me. I asked BDF what he was going to do, and he said he just wanted to get Trout and go home and hug her tight. So we did.
We watched CNN for the rest of the day. We watched in terror as the towers came down. We called a few relatives to let them know BDF hadn't gone to work and was okay, and we tried to track down our friend that worked at the Pentagon. We didn't find out until the following day that he was okay, and in fact worked at the Navy Yard like BDF and wasn't stationed at the Pentagon anymore. We watched the coverage into the night, and didn't sleep much.
Fortunately, all of our relatives and friends survived that day. We have friends who worked on the reconstruction of the Pentagon. But our lives were changed forever. Here in DC, as in NYC, we will never be the same. The sound of aircraft still makes some of us cringe. The sound of fighter jets doing flyovers of the area in patrol is still commonplace. And we will never, never forget those who lost their lives just doing their jobs, because they live in the United States. We need to stand united to make sure those who died didn't die in vain, to ensure this never, never happens again.
I had originally wanted Little Man's birthday to be Sept. 11, but the OB I wanted wasn't on that day, and he was more important to me than the date. Little Man will be 5 years old tomorrow, and I will post his birth story. For us, it was as traumatic as what the country was experiencing, and I've said before how the first anniversary of 9/11 was harder for me than that day, because once 9/12 happened, I could only deal with one trauma at a time and my mind sort of shut down. It has been harder every year afterward, I think, until this year, for some reason. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I've had one more child since then, and will have another in November this year. Maybe because my children offer me such hope for the future. Maybe, well, maybe just because Little Man wants a pirate party, and he deserves to have his birthday celebrated as happily as my other kids do, as any other kids do, because he is special. He is a survivor.
And so are we. And we go on, because if we didn't, then it means the terrorists did their job well, and we haven't done ours at all.
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