Where were you 25 years ago?

Every anniversary of 9/11 doesn’t hit me. I wasn’t in New York. I wasn’t close with anyone who lost their life that day, but I still remember everything about that morning down to what I was wearing. And when I look back, I can see how sharp of a turning point it was for life in the United States.

En route from Louisiana to Chicago. June ‘01

A lot of people I know were at school that morning. Some people were at work. Maybe one of the reasons I remember this point in time as such a stark shift is that it was a shift for me as well. I had graduated college and moved to Chicago with my best friend, Brandon, less than four months before. I’d been temping at a magazine company on Michigan Avenue and was going to be officially hired on September 12th. My first adult job. I’d been temping there for several weeks already, so I had a routine down.

We used to have occasional All Hands meetings in the mornings when the executives from New York would come in and everyone would have free breakfast with fat muffins and listen to their report on how the company was doing. One was scheduled for the morning of September 11th. I was told that since I wasn’t officially part of the company yet, it was up to me whether I went or not. I was just an assistant, so not crucial. I opted to skip the meeting so I could go to the gym and get to work at my normal time.

I did my workout and as I headed to the locker room, I remember seeing two guys staring at one of the TVs hanging from the ceiling. One asked, “What’s going on?” The other answered, “A plane just ran into the World Trade Center.”

I continued to the shower, imagining a little Cessna having an accident.

When you go to the gym at the same time every morning, you recognize the same people. I didn’t have gym friends, but I was always there at the same time as a group of girls who were very friendly with each other and I would often overhear their conversations. They were a few years older than me, but we all recognized each other and shared the crowded locker room courteously. While I was in the shower, I gleaned from their conversation that this plane crash was serious.

A postcard I bought when I first visited New York in 1996. I never sent it. Just saved it with my photos.

As I put on my make up, one of the girls was dominating the conversation. She was shorter than me, vivacious, dark hair, once wondered if, at twenty-five, she was getting a little too old to be going clubbing, once complimented my newly dyed red hair. “I’m freaking out, my mom works in the Twin Towers.” She opened up her flip phone and called her mother. I only heard her side of the conversation.

“Mom? Are you okay?… Yeah, yeah, we just saw it on TV at the gym, it looks so scary. … Okay. …. Okay good. … Okay be careful. … Call me later. … I love you.” She hung up the phone and turned to her friends. “It’s okay, she’s in the other tower.”

I never saw that girl again.

I have thought of her every September for twenty-five years.

By the time I left for work, the atmosphere had changed. It was only across the street, but I remember pounding up the sidewalk. I was wearing brown boots that I’d bought secondhand and the heels were a little wonky. Beige pants from Express with a slit in the boot-cut that promised to be ‘wash and wear, no iron necessary!’ (Lies.) A white long sleeved boat necked tee. A thigh-length, belted sweater-jacket, just a few shades darker than the pants. A silver necklace with a light blue stone—the only thing I still have. I remember that I picked the outfit because it felt ‘fallish’ and being from Louisiana, I wasn’t used to fallish weather that early.

I was on the 24th floor of 333 N. Michigan Avenue.

When I got to the door, Ricardo, the IT guy, opened it before I could scan my badge. Ricardo was a happy person. Always had a smile, always helpful and patient, even when you asked him dumb questions. He locked eyes with me and I remember how starkly different his face looked without a smile. “Did you see what’s happening?”

I’m sure there’s a picture of my desk at work somewhere, but I can’t find it. Here’s my desk in my apartment instead.

“Yeah, a plane hit one of the Twin Towers.”

“Another one just hit the other tower.” He waved me in. The cubicles and offices were all empty. Everyone was still in the All Hands meeting. I followed Ricardo to a small conference room where he had a TV set up on one of the rolling carts. It was sitting facing the doorway, as if he’d rolled it as far as the cord could go so that he could keep an eye on it from his desk. The lights in the room were off. I can’t remember what he said, but he left me there.

I sank to my knees in that dark room, looking up at that little TV, and watched the towers fall. I didn’t get up until I heard everyone coming back upstairs. They obviously had been told that the towers had been hit, but didn’t know much else. I remember turning around and seeing everyone behind me. Stephanie, dark curly hair, late twenties, from New York was in front. “What happened?”

I really liked Stephanie. “The towers fell.”

Her voice breaks. “Did they get the people out?”

“… um… no.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and spun toward her office, immediately making calls.

I went back to my desk. My AIM messenger was lighting up. My parents wanted to know where I was. They were worried that Chicago would be next. We heard about the Pentagon. College friends in New York were pinging to say they were alive. The Sears Tower was evacuated. Planes were grounded but there were still some in the air. My parents wanted to know what floor I was on. Did I know where the emergency exits were.

Finally, one of the New York bosses stopped in front of my desk. I cannot remember who he was speaking to, I just remember watching his face as he said, “I mean, if people want to go home, of course let them go home…” I remember wondering why he wasn’t as upset as Stephanie since he was from New York. I grabbed my bag and messaged everyone that I was going home.

All images in this post are photos taken that September unless otherwise dated.

I had a long train ride. This was back when cell phones had limited ‘minutes’ during ‘peak times’ and very few people had a WLAN to use their laptop on the go. And if they did, it was crazy expensive. The El was quiet that day. And so many people were on their laptops watching the news. I called Brandon, who worked in Evanston. He was not getting let off work, but I went to Evanston and met him for lunch. I don’t remember what we talked about.

I remember when I got into bed that night, I cried.

The next thing that stands about about that time was the planes. They were gone from the sky. It was weird not to hear them.

If you ever go to Chicago, the best view is from the 95th (not the 96th) floor of the Hancock. There’s a bar up there. I started seeing a guy from Ireland that August and he took me up there on a date. I was glued to the windows. I had never been that high up when I wasn’t in an airplane. I remember seeing planes pass by us on their way to O’Hare.

The flight pattern changed that day.

Picture I took flying into Chicago in March when I was scouting for an apartment. It’s been a minute but I’m pretty sure you can see that building with the two light green turrets from the Hancock. And I’m pretty sure they don’t go this way anymore.

The planes don’t go that low over downtown anymore.

My mom had tickets to visit us on September 20th. She didn’t cancel them.

I went to pick her up from O’Hare that night after work and I was able to park right next to the airport. I remember getting out of the car and looking around to make sure I wasn’t in some kind of reserved place. When I went in, I could hear the escalators squeaking. No one was there. It was as if the building was closed.

All of the screens that show departing and arriving flights were blue. Only one had information on it because there were so few flights. I tried to go to my mom’s gate. Until that time, you always went to meet your people at the gate. They wouldn’t let me. “But my mom is coming. Where do I meet her?”

They guy couldn’t tell me. He didn’t know.

My mom called asking where I was. “They won’t let me come meet you. Do you have a bag? I’ll meet you in baggage claim.”

We both went to baggage claim. My mom found her bag, apparently the only one going around the carousel, and called me again. We saw each other from opposite ends of baggage claim and waved. We were the only people there.

My mom doesn’t love pictures of herself, but hopefully she’ll forgive me for this one. She cooked and froze lots of meals for us.

She later told me that there were so few people on the plane that the flight attendants moved them all up to the first few rows. Everyone was so terrified of flying at the time, it was considered such a brave thing for any of them to be there at all. The pilots, the flight attendants, and the passengers. Air travel has not been the same since.

There was no shortage of tear stained stories coming out during that time. But the things I remember were that my mom cooked for my roommate and I. My roommate went out and got donuts to surprise us on her last day. And that my mom got to meet my cat Hedwig. And that there were printer-paper American flags in every window of every building downtown.

I have written the closing of this blog several times. I don’t really know how to sign off. It is strange to look back and see how different everything was. And not just '“We didn’t have iPhones or streaming services” different. They way we worked, the financial situation, the ability to afford things, being able to go to an airport more like it was a train station, the lack of surveillance, the lack of profiling. And I know it wasn’t an overnight change, but it is easy to use 9/11 as a Before and After point. There was just less tension in the air Before.

Or maybe I was just young.