Where I was

A newspaper friend of mine was asked to talk about her Sept. 11 memories for her official blog. Many of her memories echoed mine, and I naturally started replaying that day in my head.

After working second shift the night before, I was sleeping in to my normal 10 or so when I heard my phone ring. I ignored it, then it rang again. I finally got up and checked the message. It was another newspaper friend, Meg, saying very shakily, "Turn on the TV. Something terrible has happened." I switched it on, and there was smoke billowing over New York, both towers collapsed. I called Meg and we talked/sat in stunned silence for an hour or so. I remember thinking, "Oh God, how many people could have been in there?"

Around noon I pulled myself together for a shower and went ahead to a dentist appointment. I wasn't needed at work yet and frankly was too stunned to know what else to do. The radio in the waiting room was tuned to news, which was even eerier without pictures. Then I was called back and greeted by a cheerful hygienist who chirped, "How are you today?" Uh, a bit disturbed, actually. "Why? Oh, yeah, isn't it awful?" That's putting it mildly. After my cleaning, I went to my church to pray for a while before reporting to the newsroom. I don't even know if I prayed consciously or if I just repeated "Help us" over and over.

I got to the newsroom early, and it was sheer chaos. They were just finishing up the special edition, and I was immediately put to work reading wire stories and going through pictures. And it seems that's what I did for the next eight days straight. Everyone was bombarded with images and stories in those days, but you have no idea how many more there were. We had to filter through them all, decide which were the most powerful, which were the most compelling, which were too gruesome to print. Thousands of pictures. News alerts every two minutes as the information trickled in. You couldn't actually lay out a page until nearly deadline because the stories kept changing. We never stopped; the adrenaline dripped from the walls. And when I went home, all I did was switch on the TV and watch more. I couldn't stop the horror. (Newseum.org has a gallery of front pages from that day.)

I remember calling my sister in London, probably the next day. I tried to get a free circuit for more than two hours. We were both so relieved to hear from each other, even though neither of us were directly affected. Amanda had been in New York not a week before, had even stopped in the Krispy Kreme in the World Trade Center on something like the 9th. We talked for at least an hour even though I didn't have an international plan. You just had to reach out to your family.

I don't think anyone in the newsroom was able to actually process what was happening for days. We were constant motion. You couldn't let emotion take over or you wouldn't be able to function. I remember all the copy editors gathering in the graphic artists' room one evening a few days into it, theoretically to get on the same page about who was working what overtime (I normally had Wednesdays and Thursdays off -- that didn't happen), but what we did was finally talk about how all of this information overload was affecting us. What images were haunting us. How we weren't separating from it at home. We were four women, all under 30, watching history in a tailspin.

It all finally became too much for me that Saturday -- I know because I remember the t-shirt I was wearing. The Associated Press had just that evening started to release the pictures of people jumping from the top of the towers, the fuzzy closeups of people stripped to their underwear because of the unbearable heat. The pictures of faces peering out over the smoke, judging what was the worse way to die. And I saw the picture of a man and woman holding hands as they jumped. I still cry when I think of that picture, my whole body is tingling even now. I had to run away from that, had to leave work for a while. Brad walked me out to my car, and I just broke down and sobbed on him for several minutes. I think we made a pact not to turn on the TV that night.

What's strange is that before that day, had you asked me to describe the World Trade Center, I don't think I could have. I don't think I even knew what that phrase meant. I remember seeing the towers from an airplane while making a connection in Newark, remember the little thrill of thinking, "That's New York!," but the fact they were the World Trade Center may have been acknowledged by the pilot, not me. Amazing how something I didn't really know existed is now such a touchstone in my life.

So that's where I was; where were you?