The Blinding Blue Of That Morning

There was already something a little off about that morning.

I was running late. Normally I am on the bus, on my way into Manhattan from Hoboken, at 8:45, 9 am. But that morning, I was 20 minutes behind. Because I was late, I decided to walk two blocks north, and pick up the bus at 9th and Washington as opposed to 7th and Washington. Washington is the main drag in Hoboken. Washington is 3 blocks west of the Hudson, but the brownstones lining the street block any view of Manhattan. If you walk east on the numbered streets in Hoboken, you can see the Hudson and a glimpse of Manhattan (the Chelsea area) at the end of the street, but that is it. We were completely unaware, as we gathered at the busstop, that an enormous jet had plowed its way into the WTC.

As has been described ad nauseum, it was a stunning day. A real fall day. Saying “not a cloud in the sky” is not a euphemism or an exaggeration. It is the truth. The buildings of Washington Street cast long shadows in the morning, long chilly shadows, but the day was bright and blindingly sunny.

I am such a creature of habit in the mornings. I am also barely awake. But I had taken an unfamiliar route, I had veered off course, I had chosen 9th instead of 7th, so … Well, for me, it made a difference. I could walk down 7th Street in Hoboken with my eyes closed and never ever trip on the buckling sidewalk. Not so on 9th.

I never walked up to 9th, but that morning I did for some reason.

I was 3/4 of the way through Catch-22, a book I had never read before, much to the amazement and chagrin of … THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD. I come from a long line of Catch-22 worshippers, so I finally picked it up.

I mention this only because this is a post about what I remember on that morning. And it’s weird what you remember. Or what grows in significance later, when you look back on it. I remember that I had my nose in Catch-22, standing in the long chilly shadows on Washington Street, at 8:45 in the morning … wondering, in the back of my mind: Where the hell is the bus?

Full disclosure: I do not wear a watch. So I can put together the timing of the events on my side of the river only through deductive reasoning. I left my house at 8:30, late for me. I arrived at the bus stop, at 8:45 or thereabouts. I was on the causeway before the Lincoln Tunnel when the second plane hit. Puzzle pieces.

I began to read. Standing on the curb.

Busses during rush-hour, in Hoboken, come one after the other after the other. If you wait 3 or 4 minutes for a bus, it feels like a long time. And if 6 or 7 minutes go by, then you know something is up.

So 6 or 7 minutes went by.

Desultory conversations broke out between my fellow commuters. “I wonder where the bus is.” “I should call work … I’m gonna be late.” People stepping off the curb, peering down to the left, squinting for busses. “Maybe there was an accident in the Tunnel,” I heard. Then someone arrived at the bus-stop, and I heard her inform a couple of people, “I guess a plane hit the World Trade Center.” This was second-hand news. She was not hysterical, just reporting a possible reason for the slow-down of busses.

This was, even though we had no idea of the scope or the magnitude, disturbing to hear. In the same way that anything bad is disturbing news, if you have a heart beating in your chest. A massive earthquake in Turkey or South America. You take a moment to think, “Oh God. How awful. How awful.” Fellow human feeling. Some kid shoots up his school across the country. You take a moment: “Oh my God, how terrible … I hope people weren’t too hurt.” Hearing about the plane generated a response on that level, for the most part. Perhaps it was a bit more intensified because it was just across the river, but also: we couldn’t SEE anything yet. People watching on television across the country (and the world) had way more perspective on the events than those of us who were right there. We had no idea what was happening right across the Hudson. We couldn’t see it. We, as human beings, have a need to SEE. I know that the first thing I did when I finally was let off the damn bus 40 minutes later, still in Hoboken, the first thing I did was run, as fast as I could, down to the water, so that I could see what was happening. I HAD TO SEE.

So not being able to see what was going on just across the river was … disturbing. Everybody got thrown off. People dropped their change. Strangers broke out into conversation.

I assumed, as many people assumed, that this was probably a (as I called it in my mind) “JFK Jr. Situation”. An inexperienced pilot, a small plane …

If I had actually contemplated it, and tried to be logical, then I would have soon come to the conclusion that that guess made no sense whatsoever. JFK Jr. was flying over the ocean, on a foggy black night, with no instrument training, flying only by what he SAW, which was a wall of black. How in the world could someone MISS the World Trade Center when they are the tallest things on the landscape, dwarfing all else, and visible from miles away? My “JFK Jr.” guess made no sense.

But again: I wasn’t sitting there trying desperately to figure it out. I had a moment of: “Oh God. I hope nobody was hurt! That is terrible!” and then went back to Catch-22.

It sounds so callous. But we had no information, and no visuals, even though it was happening just across the river.

I did notice, (again, in a desultory casual way) that everybody was on their cell phone. And that nobody was actually speaking into the cell phone. I didn’t make anything of it. It was only later when I realized that that was the beginning of the being-unable-to-use-our-phones phenomenon. Everybody knows somebody who worked in those buildings. Everybody was trying to get through to them, and say, “What happened? Are you okay?” And already, at that early time, before the second plane, people’s phones had stopped working. Obviously because, like I said, the rest of the country probably had a better view of what was going on in Manhattan than the majority of us actually here did. And everybody across the country picked up the phone.

And still … the bus wasn’t coming. I don’t know how long we waited. 10 minutes maybe. 15. And then a bus came. We all piled on, gratefully. At last! We’re off to work!

In my memory, the bus lumbered down Washington very very slowly. It seems like we were in slo-mo, but that could just be retrospect coloring the memory. I am not sure what was true, what was not, but I felt like we were chugging along at a horse-and-buggy pace. Why?

Maybe we were actually going slow, because the driver, in contact with the officials at Port Authority, knew something that we, the riders, didn’t. Of course, I didn’t think this at the time. I was too busy reading Catch-22, and trying not to think about the horrible-ness of a plane crashing into a skyscraper. I was sure some people had died.

A woman sitting behind me had miraculously gotten through to her boyfriend on the phone, who was home, watching CNN, and trying to tell her what was going on. The second plane had not hit yet.

She hadn’t yet transformed into the correspondent for the entire bus, as she would do, moments later. She was speaking quietly, privately, trying to figure out, with her boyfriend what was going on. “So … what kind of plane was it? Do you know? Is anyone hurt? Yeah, well, there’s a ton of traffic on the causeway … we’re completely stopped.”

Others were engrossed in trying to dial their cell phones. Some people were zoned out as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

As the bus chug-chug-chugged along Washington, towards 14th Street (and the edge of Hoboken), where it would then take a left, and then a right … to head onto the causeway leading into the Lincoln Tunnel, I dealt with my own sense of “Something’s not quite right about this morning” by reading my book.

I remember the whole Catch-22 part of this morning so vividly because that would be the last pleasure-reading that I would do for well over a year to come.

When I finally felt that I could read again (I mean, read a book just for pleasure, and not just read books by Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, Robert Kaplan, and Sandra Mackey) – I picked up Catch-22 again, and tried to figure out where I had left off on that blindingly blue morning. The book suddenly held even more significance than it had before. Catch-22 has always had a mythical glow around it, for me, because of my father’s love of it, my uncles’ love of it, my friend Rich’s love of it… but when I picked it up again, all I could see was the morning of September 11, being stuck on that causeway, before we knew what was happening, what was going to happen, that the world, as we knew it, was about to die.

I went to go pick up where I had left off in the book, feeling … a deep sense of oddness inside me. “Where I had left off in the book” meant: Where people started screaming and we saw a pillar of flame in the sky … That was when I put down my book. For good. Or, at least, for a year.

I hadn’t remembered where I left off, so I figured it out through deductive reasoning along these lines: “Okay, so I remember the episode described in THIS chapter, so I clearly read THIS …” (flip ahead) “Okay, I KNOW I didn’t read THIS episode, none of it looks familiar, so I must have stopped before THIS …” (flip back) And in this way I finally narrowed it down to the exact sentence where I put the book down. (I’m freaky like this.)

And, without any unnecessary commentary from me, let me just say, that when I re-read the last paragraph I had read before putting the book down on the morning of September 11, I put the book down again and didn’t pick it up for months.

I was not ready for pleasure-reading yet.

I also was astonished at what I had been reading on the bus, having no idea what was coming, having no idea how prophetic it would be, having no idea … having no idea …

Listen:

Chapter 36 The Cellar
Nately’s death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperwork in his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field. His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand began trembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed — how ghastly, how very, very awful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his other friends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repentantly, for to pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew how to do. His heart was pounding with a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside, and he knew he would never sit in a dentist’s chair again, never glance at a surgical tool, never witness an automobile accident or hear a voice shout at night, without experiencing the same violent thumping in his chest and dreading that he was going to die. He would never watch another fist fight without fearing he was going to faint and crack his skull open on the pavement or suffer a fatal heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. He wondered if he would ever see his wife again or his three small children. He wondered if he ever should see his wife again, now that Captain Black had planted in his mind such strong doubts about the fidelity and character of all women. There were so many other men, he felt, who could prove more satisfying to her sexually. When he thought of death now, he always thought of his wife, and when he thought of his wife he always thought of losing her.

It was at this moment that … someone screamed … everyone looked up … around … the screams caught on … we looked out towards the city … and saw the fireball erupt into the blue air. There was no context for this event. We didn’t know what had happened. We saw it happen, but … there was no processing. It happened in front of our eyes.

Then came screams. Hysteria. The girl who was miraculously already on an open phone line with her boyfriend, elected herself reporter, so she stood up and started hollering out to all of us, what her boyfriend was saying, her boyfriend watching CNN:

“That was a second plane — a second plane — My boyfriend said a second plane just flew into the other tower.”

This is when, for the first time, I thought of my sister. Who worked a block away from the towers, which were now both on fire. Black smoke filled the air. Screams through the bus. Panic. People were jumping up and down. Crying. Screaming with frustration at how their phones would not work.

Then. For the first time. Terror. Not just anxiety, or worry. But terror. I felt that I was going to die at any minute. All bets were off on that particular day.

I started praying outloud … I was not alone … many people were praying … as we all feverishly kept trying to use our cell phones. My prayer became all one word:

hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeathamen
hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amenhailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedart
thouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholy
marymotherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amen…

Dial, hang up, dial, hang up, dial, hang up …. hailmaryfullofgrace….

Underneath the established prayer, with memorized words, was another prayer.

let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay

Meanwhile, traffic still was not moving. And that girl who had an open phone line became our eyes and ears, reporting to the rest of the bus what was happening. She just shouted out to the rest of us what her boyfriend was seeing on television. I will never, if I live to be 110, forget that girl.

I know now that within 5 minutes after the second plane hit (or an extraordinarily short amount of time, let’s put it that way) all access in and out of the city was shut down. All tunnels closed.

And then, slowly, our bus drove itself over the median strip, turned itself around, and drove us all back into Hoboken.

People were screaming, crying, jumping up and down, completely freaking out.

It seemed 5 million years ago since I had categorized the unknown magnitude in my mind as “a JFK Jr. Situation”. Obviously, America was under attack.

But all the other stuff, all the stuff I live with on a daily basis now (the rage, the foreign policy perspective, the interest in global happenings, the voracious hunger for knowledge) – none of that stuff was going through my mind on that morning. I was just trying to call my sister. My parents. My brother. My other sister.

And praying.

It was such a beautiful day. Remember what a beautiful day it was? Startlingly beautiful: Blue sky, no clouds, beaming sun … the city across the river looked benign, peaceful, ordinary.

Every time I go over that causeway, to this day, I remember September 11. I stare out at the city skyline, in all its different moods, and remember that blindingly blue awful morning.

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13 Responses to The Blinding Blue Of That Morning

  1. ricki says:

    wow.

    I wonder if someday the Smithsonian or somewhere will put together an oral history project on this. I’d nominate you to include yours.

    It was a beautiful day where I live, to, that day. I remember walking to the campus bookstore to buy a newspaper (ironically, the last day I ever did that…I don’t think they even carry the Dallas Morning News any more). We all thought it was a “JFK Junior” situation, too, until I was walking back across campus and a woman I knew slightly from the Art department stopped me and said “I just heard that it was an attack” and then everything changed.

    I look back on it now in sort of amazement at how panicked I was – living out here in the middle of “flyover” country – how after the announcement went around that we were to vacate campus (I guess it was a safety concern) how I drove around getting bottled water and canned goods and filling my car with gas…and freaking out because when I tried to call my parents, I couldn’t get a free line.

    I seriously and honestly believed the world was ending, that Chicago (where my brother and sister in law lived) was next for an attack, that the banks and gas stations and groceries would close down…I wonder, if there were another attack, would I react the same way, or would I be less panicked?

  2. Anniversary

    Sheila has been re-publishing a bunch of her 9/11-related posts – some of the best stuff I read on the subject – over the past few days. Especially today’s….

  3. beth says:

    i am profoundly shaken every time i read this post. especially the part with you praying. that gets me every time.

  4. Stevie says:

    This is an amazing and heartbreaking story, Sheila, and I’ve read it probably 10 times since I found your site almost a year ago. But this is the first time I’m reading it on the eve of the anniversary of that day.

    I had such a different experience. I was living in San Diego, and I awoke to newsradio announcing the planes had hit the towers. In disbelief I turned on the TV and, sipping coffee, watched the towers crumble. It was surreal. It was agonizing. I still can’t get my mind around it.

    My business partner and housemate was gone that morning, and I was worried about him. He had recently begun to spend nights away from the house with no explanation. About an hour later, he came through the door and by his expression I could tell he hadn’t heard anything about it. Without thinking or preparing in any way, I stood up and practically screamed, “Two airplanes hit the world trade center towers and they’ve collapsed!” He looked at me for a moment and, shaking with adrenalin and pointing his finger at me, said, “YOU have to live with yourself!!” and went running off.

    I stood in the middle of the living room in utter shock, not understanding what he meant. As it happened, my partner had begun his quick descent into crystal meth addiction and that moment of incomprehensible response to an incomprehensible moment was my first indication of his deterioration.

    Over the next three weeks, our travel industry business collapsed and my partner’s addiction spiraled down into an abyss of complete, heartbreaking destruction, while every day the wrenching horrors of 9/11 played out on TV. I cried every day. Soon it was all over. His paranoia was so extreme that I couldn’t talk to him. I tried to enlist his parents to get him into treatment but they assured me he could sleep it off at their house and that he didn’t need treatment. They picked him up at a park’n’ride lot, his feet lacerated and bleeding from having walked 60 miles barefoot on gravel during a bizarre night of crystal bingeing. In utter despair I took a trip to Seattle to see my elderly father and discovered he was much more ill and in need of care than he ever let on to me. With my business gone and my partner a frightening poster boy for the devastation of crystal meth, I moved to Seattle and cared for my dad the last year of his life.

    I wasn’t anywhere near the terrorist attacks on that bright blue day, and nobody I knew was killed or directly affected, but the unsealable rupture that occurred for everyone on earth that day still ripples through all of our lives. It seems to me that we are inextricably tied, one to the other, and when these devastating things happen, we all are changed. Never was our connectedness more apparent to me than in the aftermath of 9/11. Thank you, Sheila, for letting us see it from your perspective. It’s a great gift.

  5. jlb says:

    That brought tears.

  6. today

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  7. today

    I still think about it on days like this, when the sky is a deep blue, the clouds are perfectly formed bundles of white, the air is crisp and cool; chilly enough for long sleeves but warm enough to…

  8. Val Prieto says:

    Sheila,

    I read this and I want to offer some words of consolation, something to help ease the pain of that day, of this date forever after, but nothing but “Ay, Sheila,” comes. Were it that you were telling me this recollection in person I dont think I could offer more words than that. “Oh, Shelia” through a trembling voice and watery eyes and a heartfelt embrace.

  9. Mr. Lion says:

    If you look around today, it’s almost exactly the same sort of perfect day. No clouds, warm sun, the smallest hint of fall in the air.

    The day is the same, the skyline different, the rage and resolve as strong as ever.

  10. untitled

    It feels weird not saying something today. I almost feel required to. Not by anybody at all, but by myself. But what can I say that hasn’t been said already?

    So instead of repeating, I want to link to this post by shelia, which is the best thing I…

  11. ratan says:

    This broke my heart. But for that reason it needs to be read by as many people as possible.

  12. DBW says:

    “the rage and resolve as strong as ever.”

    Amen to that, Mr. Lion. The clarity of resolve and purpose are undiminished in me. Along with the horrendous loss of life, we lost our balance. It was revealed just how fragile the order, security, and structure of our society really is, and it was made clear once again that there will always be those who want to take it away from us. That is why I find it depressing and maddening that so many Americans want to view 9/11 as a tragic “event” on the order of Hurricane Katrina rather than a cold, orchestrated attack on everything we hold dear–and they will come again.

  13. red says:

    Well, if Katrina has revealed anything, it is that we are in deep shit if a massive attack comes on our soil again. Incompetent bureaucrats are running the show. Careerist politicians who are only protecting their positions – so they have to maintain the status quo of their big unwieldy bureacracies.

    Jesus Christ. Homeland security? Pathetic.

    Thanks for realling working to evolve and grow more flexible, guys, after the 9/11 attack. Thanks for trying to learn the lessons from that awful day. /sarcasm

    Assholes.

    I’m with this guy’s analysis.

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