SO do you remember where you were 8 years ago tomorrow????

[lost-in-nj]

cross post from the lounge
but curious about where we all were



me at work...
a phone call
turned on the tv and only got the Spanish station

watched and worried
did not have to understand
the pictures said it all

my daughter was an hour away from home at college
wanted her home

my son
a Paramedic/firemen
who was there for days


I remember sitting out side having a cigarette
and noticing there were NO airplanes
the silence was defining


then I took my mom to pick up her pills....
on a hill that overlooked NY

and I saw the smoke, fumes and all the crap

I don't know if we will ever be over this
took a cruise the next year
the whole ship went silent when we went by the site


so
where were

you and what are your memories???

lost
FREE HUGS!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 . Never take someone for granted,hold every person close to your heart, because you might wake up someday and relize you've lost a diamond, while you were busy collecting rocks.. I'm not ofuckingk..why don't we get together and break each others hearts again? I want a sunburn just to know I'm alive :(

[Barack_America]

1. Yes. I was driving to work when I heard the news.

I remember most of the day, in fact.

It was not a good day.

Edit:

My two strongest memories:
-My friend coming back from a cafe' telling me that she had watched the first building fall. I'll never forget the look of shock on her face. "You don't understand, I watched it fall", she said.
-I was living in Detroit at the time and that night I laid on my deck and watched the fighter jets fly back and forth, patrolling the US/Canadian border. They flew two at a time and were the only planes in the sky, of course.

Edit again:

Just one more memory:
-Driving home that day looking at other people's faces, knowing that we were all thinking of the same thing.

[Sterling]

94. There were other planes in the air that day.

Many wealthy (very wealthy) people were on private planes that day. I know this first hand from someone who was put on a plane that was waiting for them before the events had even played out. I still don't understand how that was possible but it happened. What it means? I can only guess but it does not sound good.

[Raine]

2. In bed

asleep.

[donheld]

69. Me too

:toast:

[Me.]

71. And Me.

Had gotten back from a business trip and planned on sleeping in but the phone, after the first plane, kept ringing and ringing with family wanting to know if we were safe. I remember the mayor saying everyone should leave and we said we're not leaving our city at a time like this, and then they closed the city down and we couldn't have left if we wanted to.

[bigwillq]

3. I was in school (college)

we got let out early.

A girl walked into my class and said that her boyfriend called from NYC and said that a plane flew into the WTC. I figured it was a small plane.

When the boyfriend called again and said a second plane hit, I knew we were in deep shit.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Right here at home. YoungerGreenKid was still in diapers then. A friend called

and told me to put on the news (We were probably watching Sesame Street or Blue's Clues at the time.) And that's when I saw the towers and the Pentagon.

I ran out to tell my landlord who was mowing the lawn. Then I called my Dad to tell him and he reminded me that we have family who work in the Pentagon. (They were okay)


I will never forget the image of people jumping from the towers or the collapse of the buildings. Or wondering about the people on the planes. :cry: Never, never.

[Barack_America]

8. Yep. I remember the scramble to make sure everyone was accounted for.

Hotmail wiped my account not long ago because I hadn't used it in a while. I had saved all of the messages from 9/11 of friends and family trying to reach out to one another. I was sad to have lost those.

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. :^( I lost the emails from my mom. Now that she's gone I wish I still had them. (I went

to a cheerleading competition with her a week before she died and I am sure the videotape I was making picked up our conversations, but given that some of them would have been about her unrecognized heart attack symptoms I have never ever been able to listen to it. But neither can I throw it out. It just sits on a shelf in my living room. :cry: )

[RoyGBiv]

5. Yup ...

I was keeping a journal at the time.

I remember the day very well, and because of the journal remember things I don't remember I remember.

I was suddenly worried about where to get milk and whether I could make it home ... ever. Not a pleasant day anywhere, I don't imagine. The next day was, in some respects, even worse.

[proud patriot]

6. Yes !

I was getting my son ready for Kindergarten ..
once a friend called and told me to turn the T.V.
on I rushed outside to look under my car to make
sure No one messed with it over night and then proceeded
to drive my son to school. I figured it would safer for
him there finger painting etc... My husband and Myself
sat Dumbfounded in front of the T.V. CBS and MSNBC ..

Dan Rather really kept me calm .. Ashley Banfield running from
the dust cloud ... I remember asking my husband where is the President ?
while he was running scared all over the nation on Air Force one ..

I was pissed at bush from Day one ..

[Ian David]

7. I was chatting on AOL and watched the second explosion on the TV reflected in my computer monitor.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush kept reading "The Pet Goat" while terrorists made u-turns above America.

[solinvictus]

9. At work listening to the radio...

... and I heard the first plane hit and envisioned a Cessna or Piper that had gone off course. Then, it was announced that a second plane hit the WTC and both were jumbo passenger jets. Hellish day.

[Wickerman]

10. Walked into the Post Office and the Post Master

asked me if I had the news on...

[dugaresa]

11. I had a day off that day. My son was in Kindergarten

I remember my mom calling cuz I was cleaning the house. I remember calling my co-workers who were starved for news because the Internet was slow and they didn't know what was going on. I told some of them, "just go home, something serious is happening and no one is going to be able to concentrate" and a lot took my advice.

I went to the school to pick up my son and went home to hug him and his sister.

I remember the call from my mother later about a cousin who worked at the WTC. We all waited and worried for her mother who was beside herself with worry. We got the call later that she had been at another location for a meeting but would have been there, so that was a blessing. She lost friends though that day and that was sad.

I live in PA, not very far from where the plane went down. I remember fighter planes flying overhead, but if not for them it was silence.

I remember taking my son for a blood test two days later and he was only 5 but he asked me, is this to donate for those people who died? and the nurse taking his blood, welled up with tears.

[femmocrat]

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was at home on the computer. I saw it happen on TV. Then I went to work in the afternoon--- (I was teaching part-time then). Parents were coming to take their children out of school. The children who were still in school were sad and confused.

We are not far from the site of the plane crash in Pennsylvania. It was way too close for comfort. They thought there might be more planes in the air at that time. It was very eerie.

It was the most beautiful September day. Perfect blue, cloudless sky. And sooooo quiet.

[flyarm]

12. yeah I took off out of Newark in front of UAL flight 93...as a flight crew for the other 9/11

airline..going to SFO..as #1 Flight Attendant on the same type of aircraft..a 757..

It was a day from hell.

fly

[Kaylee]

25. Man, that's..............wow.

[proud patriot]

32. BIG HUG

:hug:

[A HERETIC I AM]

77. I'm curious where you got groundstopped.

Where did your captain put down?

Or did you make it all the way to SFO?

[Auggie]

13. Packing

We were getting ready to move into our first house the next day. It was tough -- I wanted to watch news coverage but knew movers were coming early the next morning and there was a house to pack.

[graywarrior]

14. On Michael Moore's forum.

I first heard about it there.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

15. I live 50 miles due north of NYC. It was a beautiful morning. Not a single cloud in the sky.

I remember mentally noting that when my younger son left for school.

I was watching the Today Show when it was cut into by local news. They showed the North Tower in flames and had an eyewitness on the phone that said that he saw a small plane hit the building. I was sick to my stomach. My older son was home from school and I called him in. When the second plane hit, I told my son that we were under attack. My ex-husband works in Midtown and I tried calling him at his office and I was told he was out for a meeting. I had no idea where. My son and I were on tenterhooks until he called a couple of hours later. His meeting was in midtown but a fellow worker's wife worked in the WTC, and his co-worker was going to walk downtown to find her. Thanks goodness she got out and miraculously, he actually met her on the street as he was walking downtown and her up. It took my ex 12 hours to get home.

About an hour after the planes were called down from the skies. my son and I heard a plane and went out on my deck and saw the plane flying due south. My son asked me where Indian Point Nuke Plant was, and I showed him south and to the west. We held her breaths until we saw the plane veer toward the east. I told him that the plane must have been sent down to NYC to patrol the skies.

We were just a bit east of the flight path of the two planes that hit the towers. For several months, every time we heard a plane, we would go out and see where it was going. A form of PTSD.

One thing that I have never heard answered. On the flight path down to NYC, both planes were minutes away from a NORAD base, and why weren't jets sent from Stewart Air Force Base to intercept those flights?

Both my sons had friends whose uncles were firefighters that died that day.

[proud patriot]

37. BIG HUG

:hug:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

79. Thank you proud patriot

need it right now, watching 9/11 memorial and in a puddle of tears.

:hug:

[closeupready]

54. Yes, it's remarkable how the absolutely perfect weather that day is one detail we all remember

because the summer had been so hot and sticky and horrible for those of us with sinus problems, and finally the weather had turned, and I recall waking up that day and feeling my head was SO clear and it was just a perfect, perfect beautiful September day.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

80. And closeup and ready, since 9/11, when another morning like that presents iteself

it makes me always remember that morning. There was one like that a few days ago.....

[closeupready]

87. Yes, me, too.

Sigh.

[Sterling]

95. Indian point?

It's odd that the "terrorist" did not think to hit that target instead of or in addition to the WTC. That fact has always made me a little curious. If they really wanted to hit us as hard as they could those kinds of targets would have been a priority I would think.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

97. They passed right over it and I have thought about it as a target since that day.

Stewart's lack of action too.

BTW have you seen Rory Kennedy's HBO documentary 'Indian Point'?

[MissMarple]

16. Driving into the garage after taking my son to school.

A plane flew into one World Trade Center. I had a visual image of a small plane stuck in the side of the building.

Whoa was I wrong. I drove over to my daughter's house. She, her house mates, and one of the other mothers were watching the coverage.

Numbing, simply numbing.

And a few days later Rice was on CNN saying "We had no idea they would fly planes into buildings." I knew then they were all lying. Anyone who reads Tom Clancy knows they can and could, not to mention the high jacker who wanted to fly a liner into the Eiffel Tower in the 90's. May God have pity on their souls.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. In bed, it was 5:00 in the morning in Hawaii

I was at housing, and my hubby was on a Western Pacific Patrol.

My sis called, hysterical... YOU DO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON... IT IS HORRIBLE

So after I managed to get her to calm dow... what happened?

She told me that something horrible happened in NYC... So I went down and turned on CNN.

The next 48 hours are a blur. I spent that time on a board much like this one doing crisis intervention. It didn't even register.

When off the computer, and yes I did watch the now cleansed footage... I dealt with the neighbors kids and the fears that we were now targets... reality is, we were... we were family of active duty members.

Then the next week we had a bunch of people stuck in Hawaii... due to no flights... and taking care of all those civies, oh and finding milk became a chore, since the only place on the islands where you could get it for three weeks, was Hickam AF base. I got some for islanders who did not have access to the only place in Hawaii, probably outside of hotels, that had it.

Going to base to the medical facility meant going through Machine Gun nests, and doggies... and other security gear, and of course when the anthrax hit the sign outside, if you suspect you have it, stay outside, and have somebody contact staff...

So where was I? In bed... hell even my baby conure knew something happened. She didn't want to be with me since I got rid of daddy... her view ok... but for the next two weeks she didn't want to come out of the cage.

When did it finally hit me? A year later, seating with hubby at Housing watching the remembrance for the first year anniversary,,, as they got ready for Iraqi Freedom. That is when it finally register. That is when the tears finally came.

[MissMarple]

23. Big hug

:hug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Thanks it was amazing though

one moment they were just on a patrol, the next they were on war patrol...

And his side, lets just say it got really weird, as they were getting ready for an actual exercise when the traffic came in... they were on exercise mode. So once they were told, exercise canceled, at war...

Of course at one point they were told to look for suspicious vessels... and other hilarity that followed.



I spent days scanning the lists of the dead from the Pentagon, a former Captain of his was assigned to the Pentagon and hubby was worried he might be a casualty.

Trust me when they came home from that patrol they spent so much time under the water and no port calls, they needed the stand down.

[proud patriot]

39. BIG HUG

:hug:

[netania99]

19. I was in the Lincoln Tunnel

coming into the Port Authority from NJ. There were TVs in the Port Authority back then and I saw the smoke coming out of the first tower. I remember thinking "I better get on the E train quickly before it stops running." I had no idea what had happened - when I came out of the subway at 53rd and Lex I could see the smoke from all the way downtown. I still didn't find out what had happened till I got to work.

[Kaylee]

20. Home...very pregnant......

putting up wallpaper in the baby's room. Since I was home by the television, I ended up being the information source for my coworkers and husband. I don't think I slept for days afterwards and was worried that the stress would send me into early labor.

Ironically, I did go into labor with my second child on 9/11/04 and remember praying fervently that he would not be born on that day. Luckily he held off until 9/12.

[waiting for hope]

21. Feeding my four month old son at the time -

watching the news, living in New Orleans - then frantically freaking out because my Dad takes 95 every morning and couldn't get through to make sure he was okay.

[tekisui]

22. I was at home, my mom called me.

"We're under attack". I turned on the tv and watched the towers fall. In shock, I didn't go to class that afternoon. I knew we would be entangled for years to come. I knew there was no turning back. I looked back at my journal. I wrote in 1998 that I had read the government was worried that terrorists could hijack planes and use them as weapons. I was surprised that nothing had been done to prevent that.

It is my sister's birthday. I went out for pizza with the family and watched the tv in the pizza place instead of celebrating a birthday.

[mdmc]

24. Primary Day 9-11-01

I had been up since 2:30AM putting up yard signs and what not.
I won the Green Party Primary on 9-11-01, but the election was canceled.
I ended up not getting the Green line that year (I lost the rescheduled primary)..

[soleft]

26. 4 blocks away

I got off the bus just before 9am and started into my building. I saw everyone on the sidewalk looking up in the air so went back out to see what they were looking at. The air was filled with floating bits of paper. i took a few steps over to see around the building across the street and saw Tower One with a huge gash across it. My first thought was that a bomb had exploded inside the building.

i ran inside because I had a friend who worked at Marsh McClennan and I was desparate to find out what floor she worked on. Turned out everyone in her department that was in the office died, but my friend had worked late the night before and decided to take the morning off.

8 years later she's still shattered, racked with unbelievable survivor's guilt.

We were evacuated from downtown before the buildings fell, but I was back in my apartment on Bleecker and watched Tower One fall from my bedroom window. I moved into that apartment in 1991, so for ten years the WTC was the last thing I saw when I closed my eyes at night. Over the years i took a lot of photos of the two buildings, when the sun was rising and the light was hitting it just right. I feel such a deep sadness whenever I see an old movie that features the Twin Towers in a shot.

I'm glad my friend worked late. I wish everyone had.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. hugs

and survivor's guilt is hard to get over... my dad, WW II, at times still deals with it. (Holocaust Survivor)

[proud patriot]

44. BIG HUG

:hug:

[MUAD_DIB]

27. I was at work when I heard from my future wife that two planes had

hit the towers. I thought she had meant small planes like a piper cub.

We watched the TV in the conference room as the carnage unfolded.

It wasn't until a few days later that I learned my family had known some of the victims on board.


It still makes me sad

:cry:

[get the red out]

28. Very weird morning even far away

I live so far from New York and it was still a weird, horrible morning. I was thinking about it earlier. I was at my desk when my boss went to the bathroom but stopped at the front of our office staring at the TV we had set up for students waiting for appointments. She looked back at me and told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. I imagined some small plane, there had been planes flying around the Statue of Liberty with guys jumping off in parachutes not long before so I figured something similar had gone wrong. Then my husband called and I told him I had heard, but he kept trying to tell me another plane had hit, and finally he said "big planes" and I knew we were in trouble. It really started feeling like our whole country was being attacked, and I guess it was. People gathered in our office during the day because of the TV, and a nice lady down the hall came in very worried because her cousin worked in the Pentagon and her son had just enlisted in the military. Her cousin turned out to be ok, her son ended up in Afghanistan and was killed a couple of years later.

Terrible day leading to more terrible days.

[jwirr]

30. I got my daughter ready to go to the Developmental Achievement

Center and went downstairs to get on the bus with her. I was the aide that road with the bus full of developmentally disabled adults on their way to the DAC. One of the women said something about it just as the bus came up so I did not have time to hear more until about an hour later when I got home. Spent the rest of the day tuned in.

My feelings about it are harder to remember. I remained calm and listened and I do not remember jumping to conclusions and blaming anyone. It was only later that we learned about Ben Laden but even then I wondered if they were going to do more investigating. I think I was mostly concerned about the people and their families.

[Pool Hall Ace]

33. I was training a new employee at work.

My boss interrupted us to say that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I had a vision of a small plane maybe just glancing off the building.

Later that morning, I had a doctor's appointment, then I went home to check on my mother. She was critically ill at the time (this was only a month before she died), and I turned the TV on for her. That's when I realized what had happened.

I asked her if this was as bad as the Pearl Harbor bombing. Her reply: "Worse."

When I got back to work, employees had already been given the option to go home. I had so much going on at the time as far as caring for my terminally-ill mother, it took a while for the full effect to hit me.

[hfojvt]

34. I remember how united we were

When I drove back home from work, we were united in waiting in line for gas so we could get gas before the price went up. Not me, I went straight home since I still had half a tank, but it was hard to get across the highway since cars were lined up for blocks.

I was in a training class for my new job when somebody popped into the room and said "a plane hit the world trade center". The really strange part was that we heard that all planes had been grounded and then a few hours after that we could see a plane taking off from KCI. Later somebody claimed that that plane was Air Force One which was flying over the midwest, but that doesn't make any sense since it would have refueled in the air if needed.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

35. On may way to work when I heard about the first plane.

Recalled that a B-17 hit the Empire State building back in the day. When the second plane hit I knew it was no accident.

We spent most of the day gathered around the radio listening to news as it developed.

[johnnie]

36. I was at work and had just walked in from a smoke break

My engineering supervisor told me a plane had hit the tower and our controller had it on a little radio. I walked into his office to hear right before they announced the second plane. About a half an hour earlier I had read an article on the internet about them evacuating Americans from Japan because there were major threats of terrorist attacks.

I set the TV up in our conference room and we all watched. I mumbled something about our government knowing about this and I got some evil looking glances. I went back to my desk to print out the article I had read that morning and it was gone. I looked for it for a while and couldn't find it.

Most of the day was a blur, I felt sick to my stomach and didn't even want to think about what was coming next. It was a horrible day. I do remember driving home after work, it all seemed to be in slow motion. I had no one to go home to so I just got myself drunk and watched TV all night.

[connecticut yankee]

38. I was preparing to move

from one house to another about three miles away.

I was at the new house with the painter. I got in the car to drive back to the old house and couldn't get anything on the radio.

I switched from station to station until I finally got something -- a disk jockey sobbing so badly he was unintelligible. I finally figured out what he was crying about.

By that time I got home and rushed in to watch the TV. My husband was already watching, and the two of us sat in horror as we saw the second plane fly into the WTC.

I couldn't reach my sons, who live and work in NYC. They finally called me, and I begged them to come up to Connecticut to be safe, but they were further uptown and preferred to stay there.

We moved the next day in an absolute fog. I unpacked my life's "treasures" wondering what they all meant.

[Hepburn]

40. Just barely awake ~~ on the West Coast...

...downstairs at home, had been in the kitchen getting first cup of coffee, TV was on in the living room and the "breaking news" alert caught my attention. What I was seeing did not compute. Wondered if I was seeing some modern "War of the Worlds." Then I realized it was real. Sat and drank coffee with others who were at home with me and watched the towers fall ~~ and still could not believe what I was seeing.

:cry:

[happyslug]

41. I was on the NET with the New York Times, and it went down on me.

Yes, I was on an old dial up system at my office but the New York Time went off line about 9:00 am. As I was trying to get back on line my secretary came in me a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. My secretary ask me if I still had a television in my office. I remembered I did, buried in a unused file draw. It was a small portable 20-30 year old Black and White television, but it worked on that day. I plugged it in and we watched what was happening in New York in Glorious Black and White. Later on we were sent home since we were NOT getting any work done anyway AND they was a general concern as to how big the attack was or going to be.

Now, I live in Johnstown so the local channel would bring up what was happening in Somerset County where the fourth plane went down. Now, about fives miles away from the crash site is one of the Microwave transmitters that transmits phone lines and other communications from cost to cost. I speculated that the plane was aimed at that transmitter and this was a bigger attack then just an attack on New York and Washington (The phone and net was down do to the volume of people calling people NOT some plan to attack the infrastructure of the US, thus my speculation was completely wrong).

I hate to say it, I dismissed the first plane hitting as a horrible accident, but when the second one hit, it became clear to me this was some sort of attack (and then the crashing of the Plane in Somerset County, where I knew that Microwave transmitter was confirmed my suspicions, later found to be false, that this was a bigger attack then just four planes.

[Mad_Dem_X]

42. I was in Cleveland

My DH, sister, and I had been to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame the day before, to see the John Lennon exhibit. DH was in the bathroom, right before we were going to leave, and I just happened to turn on the TV. Like most people, I thought it was some kind of freak accident. But as time went on, and I got more info, I realized we were being attacked. We had the radio on the whole way home. We actually drove near where Flight 93 crashed.

[asdjrocky]

43. Taking my step son to school.

Then I got to come home and watched the building his favorite Aunt worked in, fall to the ground with her in it.

I hate this time of year.

[proud patriot]

45. BIG HUG

:hug:

[asdjrocky]

47. Thanks.

I took him there a couple of weeks later, it was hard to see.

[w8liftinglady]

46. getting my sons ready for school

[abbeyco]

48. In bed and nursing a killer hangover

We'd celebrated the opening of the new stadium in Denver with the Broncos vs. the Giants MNF game. I heard the report of the first plane hitting the WTC and when the second report came on the local news, I was out of bed and in front of the TV in a heartbeat. I was still drunk from the night before and was pinching myself - mostly to ensure I wasn't imagining what had really happened.

I had a good friend going to meet friends at the restaurant up top for breakfast and had a variety of friends who worked in the area as well as family friends staying at the Marriott across the street.

My good friend was late for breakfast that day and was near the towers when the first plane hit and was physically unharmed but remains shaken to this day. A friend of mine lost her husband and my family friends were unharmed.

My most vivid memory was hauling my butt into work and driving past a local mosque on the way to work and not more than 1 hour after the first tower came down, the mosque was ringed with police and guards while folks made their way in to pray.

We didn't stay long at work - I wasn't even planning on going in before noon, management made us all go home to family/friends/pets. The drive home was punctuated with electric road signs indicating the airport was closed and that there was a national emergency.

I spent the rest of the day and into the night in front of the TV watching all the news reports and not believing that my country would ever be the same again.

Peace to everyone to experienced any kind of loss on 9/11/2001 - somehow we were all affected together. :grouphug:

[damntexdem]

49. Yes, where I had been and where I was in driving to work from there ...

when the radio announced that a plane had hit the WTC. And later, when it announced that a second plane had hit the second tower -- and I said "oh, shit!"

And how I sat in my office and listened to radio reports throughout the day. And then went to teach class that evening, opening with "this has been an extraordinary day." Three-fourths of the class was made up of students from India and Pakistan; and one stood up and called for a moment of silence -- which all solemnly observed.

[Individualist]

50. Turned the TV on minutes after the first plane hit;

called friends and neighbors to let them know.

[Liberal In Texas]

51. Omaha. Saw a large four engine jet land way off in the distance.

Way after they'd grounded everything.

It turned out to be AF1 landing at Offutt. With dimson aboard looking for the deepest hole in the ground to hide in.

[NRaleighLiberal]

52. My wife and I just landed in Ireland to visit our daughter. We met her and her boyfriend in a bar

in Limerick. Waitress ran in, turned Sky news on the TV, just in time for us to see the second plane hit. The whole 10 days we were in Ireland were surreal. Our daughter was home in the US being watched by my parents, who were freaking. The Irish were absolutely wonderful to us - showed great empathy and kindness. On the international day of mourning, they played the most heart wrenching classical music on the radio all day. We will never forget it. We got all of our details from the Irish newspapers and whatever news on TV we could catch.

[closeupready]

53. On my way to work in Manhattan, and I saw smoke that morning about 8:45, but

thought nothing of it, that it was probably just a warehouse or something on fire - then the view opened up and I saw the WTC was on fire and I gasped! As time has worn down the memory, I don't recall whether I first thought of Bin Laden or Hussein, but I do recall I thought of one or the other, that I knew it was terrorism. And then I collected my senses and thought well, I have to get to work, so I did, lol. :D At that point, the trains were still running, but would only be running for another half hour, after which the whole city was literally shut down. Everyone at work was hysterical though (as was I) and we all left the office building early as we didn't want to end up like the people in the WTC. Oh, yeah, and all that week there were bomb scares in Grand Central, and people left work early a couple times - it was an insane time, that whole next year. Even a squeak on the subway would get people in a panic.

But time does heal, and I can't say tomorrow really holds much significance for me, like a day you dread - it'll just be another day. The memories are honestly painful, and it's difficult for me to watch films or coverage from then without getting angry and sad, so I generally avoid a lot of that stuff.

[pinstikfartherin]

55. I was in Junior High School.

I was in my morning 8th grade algebra class when it happened. I didn't find out about it until my 3rd period teacher had the news on television. Talk about silencing a classroom. When normally there would be talking during our reading time, there was silence as everyone stared at the television. I watched television from the time I got home until about one in the morning.

[peacebuzzard]

56. home w/ my dogs; 24 hrs earlier had left a NYC airport w/view of twin towers

.............

[Senator]

I remember where I was 8 years ago ... yesterday.

I was at a stolen election http://www.votermarch.org/ScaliaProtest.htm">protest against Scalia.

Driving back from Long Island to New Jersey, I was looking forward to the impending national campaign to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2701395#2707042">impeach the high court traitors. My optimism was bolstered by recent polls showing that those who said the election was not "fair and square" had risen from 15% to about 50% in just 9 short months.

But I also recall thinking -- while in some weekend traffic near the bridge -- how odd and out of place the twin towers looked on the NYC skyline. I thought they were an eyesore. It was the last time I'd see them standing.

Yeah, spooky.

--

[musette_sf]

57. i woke up at about 6AM

went into the living room where H had the TV on.

i thought he was watching "Independence Day".

then i saw the second plane.

my bro-in-law worked in WFC 2 so i was worried about him (for my sister's sake, i didn't like him). also wondered who of my family & friends were down there.

i had an early morning staff meeting so i mindlessly got ready on autopilot and left the house.

halfway down 680 to Milpitas i said to myself "are you nuts? go home and wait for calls from everyone."

so i turned around and went home.

finally heard from sister... bro-in-law got out okay, had to walk to midtown covered with ashes, commandeered a limo with several other guys and got back to Darien.

finally heard from brother... he works in midtown but he was absolutely freaked, he was sobbing almost uncontrollably when he called.

heard later that a friend who worked in the WTC during the '93 bombing had been working downtown at the time, she had to walk covered with ashes over to the Hudson, where she got on one of the boats going over to Staten Island.

as someone said at the time, "Yeah, they were ugly buildings, but dammit, they were OUR ugly buildings."

i am nostalgically fond of them now.

i watched them go up.

my first apartment was in St George in Staten Island, where i had a view of the harbor and the skyline, featuring the WTC.

it broke my heart to watch them come down.

the year after, i went to NY and sat in the Winter Garden, which had just reopened, and meditated and prayed for a long, long time.

i hope some of the souls heard me.

note: when i came out of the subway at Rector Street, i smelled it right away. a year later.

that trip was so sad. empty sky from everywhere. from down the shore in Bay Ridge, from going over the Manhattan Bridge on the subway, from everywhere.

[cherokeeprogressive]

72. I had almost the same exact experience.

At the time I shared an apartment with my younger sister. My alarm went off, and I went into the living room to see her sitting in her chair with her makeup box on her lap as with every other morning, but she looked like she was in a trance. I got to a point where I could see the TV at the very instance the second plane hit.

I went straight to the phone, and called in sick. I knew I'd never be able to concentrate on my job with that vision in my head. The day went downhill from there.

[MichiganVote]

58. I was there the day America woke up to the hatred others had for us....

I was there. I was a witness along with every other American who saw or smelled the horror of our fears. It had finally arrived, our day of reality. Some called it our day of reckoning and maybe it was. Its hard to say, we've had so many. We've ignored so many.

I was working in a heavily at risk elementary school. All the little Charlie Manson wanna be's and will be's were my little friends. They would listen to me and do what I told them to do. They respected me, but that day I had few answers for them or for me. I told them as much.

Factually, the school secretary informed that a plane had hit the first tower. I asked her if the news had called it an accident and she said the news had not reported as much. So I said that it was on purpose then. She looked at me quizzically. But I knew. I knew because my high school son had just finished a paper in school about terrorists. So I knew. Think about that. One mother, one employee in an average at risk elementary school could figure out the truth prior to the fucked up administration, FBI, CIA, State Dept...blah, blah, blah. Pathetic.

Teachers turned on their TV's and taught math to the vision of fire ravaged buildings. I toured the classrooms and asked them to at least turn off the sound. I lacked authority to tell them anything more. I felt as though I were in a maze of denial. Why can't they react as I am?
Think!! I say to myself. Later, after the first tower had fallen the District office calls to tell all teaching staff to turn off the classroom TV's. I monitor the reactions of our school children, how quiet they all are. A teacher objects to turning off the TV. Says its "history in the making"...as she watches the bodies floating down, down, down through the air and sky. She wanted to push the now into the 'that was then' motif. A coping strategy.

Crazy. I remind the teacher this is not history now, this is reality now. How, I think, can she miss the difference? I'm calm but my own questions betray my mental confusion.

We were like ghosts in America that day. We moved or stood still without power. The phones were answered according to a thousand and one emergency plans. The parents came and picked up their children from a 50's era school in the middle of four corn fields distant from any metropolitan area. Adults on staff scanned the sky as the remaining children played at recess on the broad grassy expanse of chipped paint equipment. The colossal mind fuck of the day.

Afternoon is better. TV's are off and the children still in attendance are on a normal routine. I thought of it later as the 'holding our breaths' segment of the day. In, out, in, out. Shit this is really all out fucking messed up.

On my 40 minute drive home, I listen to ongoing reports on NPR. My son's are home from the rural high school they attend. They are excitable and we all review the video of the day. Over pizza. Everyone home, safe, anxious to relate their adventure of the day. I'm still thinking this is seriously fucked up. We are hated. We are hunted. Do you get it yet America?

I know where I was when man landed on the moon, when Kennedy was shot, when Bobby was shot, when Lennon was shot....I know where I was when 911 happened. It was the collectively bad day in America. It was the day that gave George Bush and Dick Cheney the right to slaughter our young men and women and Iraqi civilians in a war without the very weapons they had said existed. I didn't believe them. I was helpless to change that.

I was also a private therapist in addition to my job at the "at-risk" school. For two solid weeks I worked through the issues of 911 with my clients. Shock, surprise...but not one asked the important question, who hates us this much?

In our American K-Mart world we are fragile. We lack strength and resolve. Please America, help me revise our character by replacing fear and grandiosity with strength and humility.

Solidarity.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

59. I sure do, and I've spent the past eight-years trying to get it out of my mind.

I get the reason so many need to memorialize the event, I really do. I'm not disrespecting anyone. Yet I still find myself just wanting to learn from all the mistakes, mourn all our losses, move forward and heal.

An epic tragedy which could have been avoided. Senseless wars which appear to be endless. Deaths which keep tallying up year after year.

It's become a never-ending cycle and I'm so very tired.

[nolabear]

60. I was on my way to my job as a therapist

I got out of the shower and turned on the Today Show. The second plane was about to hit, and Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were clearly trying to figure out what was going on, if it was an accident. Then the second one hit and they went into shock. We watched, disbelieving, as long as we could. Then I went to work at the agency I was at then. I have a stark memory of driving down the highway, with all of us in all the cars catching one another's eyes, reflecting the horror. At one point I found myself driving behind a semi that must have been carrying a theater set, with the words "Les Miserables" embalzoned across its sides. No truer words, I thought.

Of course people talked about it, and we watched the TV between sessions in the office. And we tried to support one another, but even for those of us trained in dealing with trauma, it was almost too much to bear. I took great comfort from the local adult alt music radio station, which played every sad, brokenhearted song they had for about two days. I remember Paul Simon's "American Tune" and Sting singing about "how fragile we are."

A year and a day later my father died after a long illness. I still am convinced that, even in his state, he hung on long enough not to have to share that day with it.

Thanks for the thread. Peace, everybody. Peace.

[AsahinaKimi]

61. Sitting at home when my mom yelled...

Come look at this.. see the TV! I kept thinking, why are they showing it hit over, and over, and over, and over and over again. It was like the News was stuck on instant replay. Horrible.

[ThatsMyBarack]

62. I heard the news around 8:51 a.m. CST....

From an email pal who saw the Twin Towers go down from her window in NJ. :(

[Habibi]

63. At my last "real" job, for Kodak.

My department turned on the TV and watched, cried, worried. We all had traveling friends and coworkers, and we were worried about them.

I remember when Bush (was it Bush, or some other official?) came on and said it was the work of terrorists, I didn't believe him. He seemed just a little too satisfied.

[madrchsod]

64. i was at work walking to another building when i heard the news

[Ilsa]

65. Called my friend in CA to make sure her husband, a pilot, was home still asleep

next to her. (He was.) Then I called hubby who was working in a major business center on the East Coast. He didn't pay attention until the Pentagon was hit. Advised him to immediately extend his car rental in case he had to drive back to texas, and get several hundred dollars in cash in case electronic payment systems were attacked.

[Warpy]

66. Worked the night before, got up to pee

flipped the set on to catch the noon weather and BAM.

I remember being unsurprised, only wondered what had taken them so long to do it again after the 1993 bombing.

I also knew it would allow the illegal administration to consolidate power.

I prepared myself for years of suck at that point. I just didn't know how bad they'd suck.

Went to the market a couple of hours later. There was a silence I hadn't heard since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I never want to hear it again.

But I probably will.

[PDJane]

67. I was having breakfast in a restaurant that is no longer there..

And heard the news. It then came to me that my son and his team were in the Trade Centre. I tried to reach him, finally called the Toronto office.....and finally got through. He was in Toronto because of the weekend's shutdown of the security system...and his team was out. His girlfriend and too many of his friends in the upper floors weren't.

It was a bittersweet day.

It looked to me like a demolition, frankly.

[Roland99]

68. Driving to work I heard Iraq had shot down a drone. When the attacks here happened...

I was down in a server room and thinking some Cessna had flown into one of the WTC towers. After we got back to our desks did we realize what was going on.

[lumberjack_jeff]

70. Employed. Aaah... the good old days. n/t

[Hosnon]

73. Slept until my roommate's clock radio said something about the President being "safe".

Or something to that effect.

That's the kind of thing that wakes you up...

[unblock]

74. in midtown, wondering if i should take my emt-trained ass downtown

mrs. unblock (actually it was 1 month before the wedding) talked me out of it.


to this day i wonder if i did the right thing.

objectively, i think i did the right thing. i'd have problems today because of the air quality and it's unlikely i would have really been able to make a difference.

but emotionally, it's hard to live with the thought of what i might have done for someone had i gone in and choosing to just walk away.

[mulsh]

75. I was at home working on my computer. The local Jazz station's

DJ ( Alisa Clancy at KCSM)was playing the same funereal piece over and over, I think is was something by Duke Ellington. She kept breaking in and saying "if you're near your TV turn it on). After the 3rd announcement I turned on the TV and saw the live coverage.
My first thought was "oh shit". I called my wife at her office and we talked for less than a minute. We've been through natural disasters out here and know enough to keep the phone lines clear. This was between 7am - 8am Pacific time.

I watched the assorted TV station's coverage for the next couple of hours. I remember seeing people jumping from one of the towers before it collapsed.

Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft" was released that day. I went out to Berkeley with my twin brother to buy a copy. Everywhere I went the stores and restaurants had their TV's tuned to the new. I listened to the album once, then turned the TV on with the sound off and practiced my guitar for an hour or so until my wife got home.

The first time I heard some fatuous asshole exclaim "this changes everything" or words to that effect I got really angry. I figured political forces would use the event to their own ends and it turns out that was a prescient thought. To this day when ever I hear someone say "9/11 changed everything" I wonder what they're after and how much it will cost.

I worked for the county coroner's office in the late 70's. I remember working on the Jonestown victims before they got buried. I figured I had a fairly good idea what was in store in NY. I was a bit relieved when the initial estimate of the dead of 10- 15,000 kept being lowered. 3000 is way to many people to die at once but it's better than what was initially projected.

I stopped watching coverage of the trade centers a couple of days later and try to avoid watching it to this day.

[Lifelong Protester]

76. walking into a class of fifth graders, one of them said," Ms. _____,

I heard on the radio on the way to school that a plane flew through the World Trade Building (he was a fifth grader, had most of the facts) this morning"...I asked if he meant flew between them, I had this image of some hot dogger in a small aircraft going "through" (as in between) the two towers. The second teacher in the room went down to the library to check it out on our school's one cable TV (we were yet to get cable TVs in all rooms; I made sure we got them after that). The second teacher came back up in a few minutes, and he was pale and looking shook. "It's true," he said, "and it looks pretty bad."

After teaching I immediately went to talk to the other principal (a National Guard colonel now) and we both looked at each other and he said, "we are so in trouble" and I said, "Yeah, and Bush is president." I had no faith in the president from the get go, and it has proven that I was right.

It was strange here, out in the middle of the 'flyover' area, as there were no planes flying over, and no trains up and down the riverside of the Mississippi River for days.

I rememeber hugging a lots of kids. I talked to several parents on the phone, worried, as we all were. I won't forget that day for a long while. I'm a teacher and a principal, and I couldn't show how shook up I was about this all day. But I cried that night. After I filled my gas tank, due to the persistant rumors of gas going sky high the next day.

[proteus_lives]

78. I remember silence.

I woke-up in my college dorm to complete silence. It was very unsettling, a building with 600 kids in it. It was always noisy. I got up and went to have a morning smoke. I didn't check my e-mail or voice-mail first. They were filled with messages from friends and family.

I walked by dorm rooms with open doors and they were filled with people watching TV. I remember thinking, "What the fuck is going on?" I walked outside and lit up. Some other people were smoking and I wandered over and they filled me in. I went back to my room to watch TV and check the net. Needless to say I didn't go to class (I wander if anyone did?)

I spent the next couple of days glued to the tube on the phone because everyone was asking the same question, "What happens next?"

[CBR]

81. I was at my small college in West Virginia at my work study

job in the Development office. We heard that a plane hit the world trade center on the radio and we all assumed it was a small plane. Then we tried to get online -- CNN and all the others were extremely slow. Around 9:15 I went to class and the professor came in, said we all needed to go to the lounge to watch the news. I spent the entire day in the lounge with alot of my classmates watching the horror. It was surreal.

[NNN0LHI]

82. I was walking my 2 and a half year old dog who I had to put down earlier this year

We got back from our walk just as the second plane hit.

Don

[blueamy66]

83. Getting ready for work...

woke up my Dad as soon as I saw the news....especially since an AA jetliner was involved.

I was terribly sad all day.

[Jennicut]

84. Getting ready for work...when I got to work and after the plane hit the Pentagon, a good friend

was worried about her sister. She cried in my arms. Her sister was in a coma for a little while but came out of it.

I will never forget that day nor what Bush, Cheney and all the Rethugs did to twist the death's of innocent people to fit into their agenda for war.

[architect359]

85. At home in Arlington VA

My wife and I had just woke up and puttering around. Our apartment complex is 3 - 4 miles away from the Pentagon. When the plane crashed into the Pentagon, our whole building shook. We did not realize what had happened at that time. I had assumed that it was building maintenance draining our water mains as was scheduled for that week.

Than the sirens from the emergency vehicles started and went on and on as vehicle after vehicle raced towards a nearby on ramp - than I thought to turn on the local news to see if there was a nearby fire or something. That's when we found out about NYC. Shortly thereafter, we found out that the Pentagon had also been crashed into. That TV set stayed on until the next day.

I remember my friends who had already gone into work calling me to forget about coming in - that they were being evacuated from the city and that they would be walking out of the city because public transport was either jammed or cancelled; the bridges were all closed inwards towards DC.

That was a crazy day - so chaotic that I recall news reports indicating that the State Department has been car bombed!

[HamdenRice]

86. I was in lower Manhattan. Had gone under the WTC around 7 am

I went into work really early and was at my desk by about 7:30, after having taken the train from Brooklyn, including through the WTC station.

I heard this plane. You often hear planes in Manhattan, but this one was getting louder and louder and louder. Then I heard what sounded like a cross between two trucks crashing and an explosion. My first thought was that it sounded someone was doing a jet fighter bombing run. I turned on my radio and heard that a plane had hit the WTC.

I went down to the street, where I had a clear view of the WTC and watched it burning for a while and went back and unbelievably, went back to work.

Then I heard on the radio that a second plane had hit, went down again and realized with some co-workers that it wasn't an accident. I watched the towers fall on an office tv and spent much of the rest of the morning trying to walk home to Brooklyn.

As I walked south toward the towers, there were thousands of people streaming north, many of them covered in white dust.

When I got to the Williamsburg Bridge thousands of people were streaming over it and then suddenly, just as I was about to get on it, the police threw up a barricade and said no one could cross because the bridge was wired with explosives. There was lots of crazy misinformation floating around. After a while they told us to take the Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridge.

[rainbow4321]

88. Driving my daughter to school

Heard the initial report of a plane hitting the first tower..had a mental image of a Cessna hitting the building. Til I got back home and turned the TV on. Then saw the impact of the second plane..but at the time I thought the explosion was related to the fire in the first building because the two were so close. Found out later in the day my niece's mother in law worked in the first tower and was missing. I'm not sure if they ever found her remains.

[AngryOldDem]

89. Literally walked around the house all day.

I have never in my life felt such helplessness and fear. Nobody knew what was happening, or what would happen next. But I could not sit still, I had to be on the move, doing something.

I remember the day being absolutely, perfectly gorgeous. Crystal-clear, deep blue sky. I don't recall a day that beautiful, really, since 9/11/01.

I saw the second plane come from the side of the picture on the CBS feed and then the explosion. I remember thinking that I could not believe what I just saw. I was numb for about a half-minute, and then shock just set in. (MSNBC is replaying the coverage from that day, and damn, if the emotions I felt then aren't coming back to me now.)

Then the Pentagon...rumors that planes were headed to the Capitol...I was expecting something to happen across each time zone as the day went on. Sears Tower in Chicago, something in Denver, perhaps; any skyscraper in LA.

My two older kids were in school and I remember thinking that if anything else happened, I was going to bring them home. Rather stupid, looking back on it, but again I felt I had to do SOMETHING -- I had to exercise some kind of control over a situation that was uncontrollable, even by those who are charged to protect us -- our leaders. At points, I remember thinking that there was a chance that none of us would live to see the end of the day, and I wanted us all to be together. This was it. WWIII.

My husband, meanwhile, was trying to contact his brother, who was in NYC that day and was on his way to the WTC for a meeting. Phone lines were jammed, but eventually we got a hold of him later Tuesday night. He saw the planes hit the towers. A business associate and he were finally able to rent a car out of New York and were driving back that night. My brother-in-law lost many friends and colleagues that day, both in the towers and on the planes. I don't know if he's ever truly gotten over it.

But perhaps the most bizarre part of the whole day came late that afternoon. We lived about 15 miles from a strategically important Air Force base then, and around 5 p.m. a plane flew over and caused a sonic boom. It was the first sonic boom I'd heard since I was a child -- more than 30 years prior. The local media immediately went nuts and started reporting that a plane had hit the VA facility on the west side of town. It took about a half-hour to find out that it was just a sick, ironic coincidence of a sonic boom on perhaps the worst day all of us were enduring.

It's amazing how it all comes back. I NEVER want to experience another day like that one. EVER.

[workinclasszero]

90. I had just got home from work when my ex called me and said..

"Turn on the TV! A jet crashed into the world trade center in New York!" So I did and I was thinking what a terrible freak accident.

Until I watched the second jet crash into the other tower...

After that the news anchors and I realized we were under some kind of attack. Then the Pentagon got hit as well. It was a dark and horrible day imaging the violent deaths of those thousands of poor people in the buildings and on the jets. :cry:

So sad. The horrible will of humanity to create death, misery and destruction is so terrible I can't stand to think about it very much. It is so disheartening.

[redqueen]

91. On the way to work, listening to NPR.

Went to work for a while, but I wasn't getting anything done. The people I work with are mostly from another country, and when the walked by and saw how upset I was, they told me about how people in other countries are used to this... how Americans have been lucky, and now get to join the rest of the world. They smiled and laughed... I couldn't take it.

I was back at home watching the news when the second plane hit. I was glad to be back home with my two little kids so I could hug them close. It took days for it to really sink in...


And it could have been prevented. That's the worst part of it all.

[Sterling]

92. I was living on Houston facing south.

I watched in horror as the event unfolded. I was woke up by my dogs freaking out because people were climbing my fire escape to watch. We were told that day that it was OK to breath the air which was the first lie I became aware of about 9-11. Spending 3 minutes outside for the following weeks made it obvious that the air was full of poison. My throat swelled up glads in my throat also swelled up. The lies just kept coming. I don't buy in to many theories about what happened that day, especially the governments version We need a real investigation into the events of that day.

[OneBlueSky]

93. I rolled out of bed a bit late, went to my computer, and tuned in to DU . . .

where people were just beginning to discuss some plane hitting one of the towers . . . most seemed to think it was a small plane, and while there was concern, it was fairly mild in nature . . .

so I went into the other room and turned on the tube, only to find every station covering the smoke bellowing from the first tower hit . . . as I sat there watching, all of a sudden the second plane slammed into the second tower, and everything changed . . . back on DU people were talking about an attack and a conspiracy, and I was having trouble processing the whole thing . . .

an hour or so later the second tower collapsed, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around it . . . a short time later the first tower went down, and I remember thinking "they just knocked down the fucking World Trade Center!!!" . . . and I still couldn't wrap my mind around it . . . I still can't . . .

I also remember thinking that the way the buildings fell reminded me of one of those controlled demolitions they use to take down large structures . . . as it became apparent that both towers had come down precisely into their own footprints, all I could think was "no way!" . . . and everything I've learned about the collapse of these two structures since that day leads me to continue to think "no way!" . . .

[Dulcinea]

96. Absolutely.

I remember every detail of that day.

I was 7 months pregnant with my first child. It was a hot, muggy morning here in suburban Atlanta. We were donating an old fridge to charity, so I backed my car out of the garage to make room for the truck. Just out of habit, I turned the radio on, and hearing morning DJs talk about terrorism set off all my alarm bells. I parked the car, went inside, and turned on the TV just in time to see the plane hit Tower 1. I spent most of that day patting my belly, telling my daughter to stay in there.

I remember praying that this was the worst accident in the history of aviation and not terrorism.

Sept. 11 is my sister & brother-in-law's anniversary.

That was my generation's "Where were you when?" I wasn't born yet when Kennedy was assassinated.

[condoleeza]

98. I had fallen asleep with the TV on and woke up as the 2nd plane hit,

at first I thought it was a movie and then reality sunk in. My first thought was of a cousin's wife, whose brother was a firefighter in NY and was already a decorated hero. I knew he would be the first in and in fact he was nearly the last out, as they found his body 5 months later, nearly intact. Of a family of 3 boys/1 girl, her first brother was murdered, her second died of an overdose 2 years later, and then this, a father of 4 children under 10. She has never flown since, it ended their marriage, she will never be the same.

I had been up late painting my boyfriend's upstairs because he had a new tenant moving in on Saturday. He had been working for 2 months as crew on a movie that wrapped the next day. We had plans to go to the coast and unbeknownst to me had bought me a ring and was going to propose on our trip. I don't remember what day of the week it was, but I know that I was glued to NPR until I finished painting and we left for the coast late Friday night. I've always found it interesting that we identify events with what we were doing at the time. I lost a friend and got the call about it while I was cleaning my stovetop. To this day whenever I clean my stove I think of him, it is actually something I like remembering, it is a way of keeping him with me and I hope this stove lasts forever. 9/11 always has me remembering being in the sweltering heat painting "cheerful" colors at that house.

Friday night, in a somber mood, we went to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon, a place we had been many times, a place we felt at home, to try to find some joy in life. We wrote in the journals there about how we felt. On Saturday night we had dinner at the hotel, which is always "an event" as they seat you family style and play a game called "2 truths & a lie", which we had always looked forward to. After dinner we went upstairs to work on a puzzle in the library. We met a couple from Amsterdam who were also staying there. They had flown into NY just an hour before the first plane hit. As you might imagine we had quite the conversation for over 3 hours. We said goodnight, made plans to meet for breakfast and went back to our room. He proposed to me that night.

We stayed in touch with our new friends from Amsterdam and last summer they came back to the US and stayed with us for over a month. We had spent a total of 5 hours with them before then, but we missed them when they left and we plan to go there soon, they are like family, she and I both feel that somehow we are sisters and have a deep bond. On election eve '08 they called us to share in Obama's victory and opened their windows so we could hear people cheering in the streets in Amsterdam. So, this time in US history has many meanings for this woman who lost her first love in Vietnam.

We were married 3 years ago, I brought my stove to the house we bought together.