When September 11th occured I was working for a global company and all of the US regional managers were in for a quarterly business review. We had just returned to the conference room from a “bio break” (gosh, isn’t corporate America quaint?) when someone shared that the first tower had been hit. Since most of the attendees were from across the country and staying in hotels, the majority vote was to keep going with the meeting. I wanted to go home. The rest of the company had done just that, the place was like a ghost town when I walked to my office at the end of he long, horrific day.
Weeks after that devastating Tuesday, I would speak to people on the phone from other parts oe US and they seemed to have had a different experience than those of us in the east. The best way to describe it is that they seemed to have returned to life as usual. This has stayed with me and in more recent years I have noticed when I travel outside my part of the country that I never see any mention of 9/11. (I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not referring to anyone who personally lost a loved one.)
Last month my husband and I left the Beachwod Cafe in Los Angeles, not far from the Hollywood Sign. Mister Rain stopped near the parking lot and read to me a sign in a small flower bed.
Like ALL of us, I will never forget that beautiful fall morning that became the ugliest thing we had ever seen. I will, however, forget my prior assumptions that the west and central parts of the US did.
#sisterrain #alittlesightalotofheart #legallyblindwriter #writer #writersofinstagram #ushistory #history #americanhistory #usa #america #unitedstates #911 #allofuswillneverforget
