In memoriam

Today I remember a beautiful clear day 10 years ago. A day just like any day, when I rode the bus to the Pentagon, transferred to the metro, and arrived at my office just across the river.

I remember my office-mate receiving a phone call from a friend saying that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. We found a little radio and started listening to the news. The correspondent at the Pentagon reported that the entire building just shook, and he thought a bomb had gone off. 

Rumors of another plane. It’s heading for the White House, just up the street, where a number of my friends are working. Or it’s heading for Congress, just up the street the other direction, where more of my friends are working. 

I wake up my Dad in Hawaii so that he will know I’m okay. I can’t get a hold of my Mom, because she’s in training, but I leave a message. Cell phones aren’t always working because everybody is calling loved ones to make sure they’re okay. 

We’re told to go home. But my route home is through the Pentagon. No metro. No bus. Four of us decide to walk to the closest person’s apartment. We walk across the 14^th Street Bridge, past a smoking Pentagon and tons of emergency response people. We walk through the Pentagon City neighborhood, where we meet some Air Force officers who had been just down the hall from where the plane hit. They were looking for a sports bar where they could get a drink and watch the news. 

We arrive at the apartment and watch the news. All day. Trying to figure out what is going on. Being told that nobody is allowed to drive on the streets unless it’s an emergency. After dark, the roads are opened, and we are able to go home.

I remember generosity and kindness in a city known for neither of those things. I remember people passing out lemonade to the thousands of people walking to their homes. I remember patriotism. The tons of American flags flying on cars, at homes and office buildings for months afterwards. Songs like “God Bless the USA” and “Bring on the Rain” playing on the radio. 

I remember our pastor that Sunday speaking about the problem of evil in the world, and the sermon given by an incredibly gifted young intern – just as his grandfather had preached the Sunday after Pearl Harbor. I remember the many people asking for prayer for friends and family in New York or who worked at the Pentagon. The man crying because his small children couldn’t understand why their friends were never coming back to the day care. 

I remember anxiously watching planes fly across the sky for months afterwards. Riding a silent train through an eerily closed Pentagon metro station.

I remember all of the jokes about having to go shopping to keep the economy running, “or else the terrorists win!”

I remember the debris at the Pentagon being removed and a new clean wall rising up, with the American flag flying above it.

I remember a beautiful clear day a year later, exactly the same as the year before. Dawning in a world that was never the same.