Kate McKinney

9/11

10 years is forever. And a moment.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was seven months pregnant with that little guy over there. (Now, he’s in the fourth grade, loves Pokemon and LEGOs and plays piano. And he’s got three siblings.)

Jason was already gone, headed to work. I was getting ready for work at my law firm. The TV in our bedroom was on, like most mornings, tuned to the Today Show. I remember Matt Lauer and I remember Tom Brokaw. I don’t remember Katie Couric but I’m sure she was on as well.

I sat down on the bed for a moment when I saw a report that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. A wild accident, I was sure.

But I sat and watched as they talked about it, probably because I knew my middle sister worked nearby. As I watched a live shot of the first tower, another plane smashed into the second tower. And my heart raced, the breath went out of me. Everything changed.

It became immediately clear that this wasn’t an accident. I don’t remember if I called Jason (although I must have) but I know I called my mother, who asked me to call my sister.

At the time, my sister and her then-boyfriend (now husband) lived on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge but both worked in Manhattan. Jill worked at a restaurant in the Financial District, just two block from the WTC. Will worked at a restaurant a bit further north.

Jill answered the phone, sleep in her voice. She was not scheduled to work until later. And she had no idea what was going on just a few miles away from her door. As I talked to her, she turned on the television and we watched together in stunned silence.

Except it wasn’t silent. Through the phone, I could hear a constant stream of screaming sirens outside of her window. First responders headed past her apartment and over the Brooklyn Bridge to help. I still wonder how many of those trucks and their personnel were lost a bit later in the morning.

I finished getting dressed and drove to work, listening to the news on the radio. The towers fell as I made my way to the office. No work was done as we all gathered around computer monitors and televisions to watch the news. We learned about Flight 93 and about the Pentagon about the time I arrived at the office.

Already hormonal, I spent the next few days crying and wondering what the world would look like for my child.

The restaurant my sister worked at never re-opened; rescue workers used it as a place to rest. The building was eventually torn down due to structural problem related to the 9/11 devastation. I looked for it on a trip to NYC in August, 2006. A hole in the ground was all I could find. I even called my sister from the street corner to double-check the address. Gone. It shook me.

10 years later. I have four children instead of zero. I live in a different house. I have a different career. I have the same husband. My sister married her boyfriend and convinced him to leave his native New York City for the calm and affordable Midwest. They have a new baby this year. My other sister was a sophomore in college in Nashville then; now she’s a PhD working in Los Angeles.

I am happy and blessed. But my heart aches for all that was lost ten years ago on that bright morning in New York and across the world. Our lives changed. History changed. The world’s attitudes changed. I’m worried about my future and about the world that my children will inherit.

I had no idea, when I sat on my bed and watched that plane crash into a building, that I’d still be worried ten years later. And I’m wondering when or if it will ever stop.