© 2002 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

(IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)

"he World Trade Center just fell over." Those words will haunt me until the day I die.

He could have been saying, "I think I just ran over a speed bump," for all the expression in his voice. Some radio jock or news reporter, who had exactly five seconds to process and relate the information he had just witnessed. In his rush to inform the world, he had had no time to figure out what he was feeling. Fear? Sadness? Amazement? Unbelief? Fascination? Confusion? Yes. But, what came across the airwaves, out of a car speaker to where I was standing on Sixth Avenue at the corner of Twenty-eighth Street at about ten o’clock in the morning on September 11, 2001 was simply… nothing. In fact, the voice was so devoid of anything that I thought for sure I had misheard, or at least misunderstood. But, standing on tiptoes, looking down the wide street toward the financial district, I could see the trail of smoke and dust leading away from where one tower had once stood. Until I got to a television and saw the replay, I was under the impression that the building had gone over sideways.

"A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. A big one." It’s amazing how fantastically different the meaning of that statement was to me at nine o’clock in the morning on September 11, compared to its meaning at the same time on September 12, and every day since then. I overheard a fellow New Jersey Transit passenger telling the news to a conductor. Of course, our first reaction was simply, "What?" Couldn’t be. Then, honestly, it was excitement. "Wow. No kidding. A plane? Into the World Trade Center?!?" I moved over to the right side of the train to make sure I’d have a better view.

Alfred Hitchcock always said that in movies an explosion is scary, but knowing that somebody is sitting on a bomb that is about to explode in five minutes is even scarier. The "Law of Diminishing Returns" states that an audience won’t respond to the same trigger as strongly the second time around. In order to keep scaring people, the storyteller has to keep changing his triggers and upping the stakes. Hitchcock knew how to make us tense and then scare us at just the right moment, then let us relax for just long enough to scare us even harder. From a purely Hollywood point of view, Hitchcock couldn’t have scripted a better 9-11.

I had several opportunities to get off my train and not go into the city that day. But I kept going, on my way to work. My thought, "The terrorists have done their worst, but they’re done now." Then the first building collapsed as I walked to work. Then I heard about the Pentagon in the elevator. Then the second building collapsed while I watched from my office. Then the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. It seemed like we were getting a fresh new scare every thirty minutes. And with each successive scare I kept thinking, "That’s the end of it… That must be the end of it… Good God, is this the end yet…?" By the end of the day, I, like everyone else was now thinking, "How will they hurt us next? How long must I be scared?"

"We’re sorry. All circuits are currently busy." September 11 was the first time I had ever heard that recording. Until the first building collapsed, I think maybe only the people right at Ground Zero understood the severity of what was happening. From far away, the clouds looked like remnant smoke from smoldering fires. Even on television, the massive all-consuming flames, burning at over 2000 degrees looked like little more than scattered brush fires. But when the towers came crashing down, any doubt about the graveness of the situation was quickly eradicated, and the phone lines erupted. People calling loved ones to say they were okay. People calling loved ones to see if they were okay. People calling loved ones to say, "Did you see what just happened?" I tried calling Lauren, my fiancée to tell her I loved her, but I heard, "All circuits are busy..." I called again and got the same recording. I must have dialed a couple dozen times before the lines cleared up enough to let me through. Here and there, in the months since, I have gotten that same recording. Usually, it just means I’m calling during peak hours. But, my heart races every single time and I quickly redial, wondering if something has happened that I don’t know about. Wondering if my loved ones are okay.

In addition to what we were seeing on television, there were all sorts of unconfirmed reports. A fire on Capitol Hill, an explosion at the White House, a plane shot down by the Airforce, another plane heading up the Potomac River towards Washington, Muslims dancing in the streets and throwing candy in celebration, gunfire and explosions in the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq. We didn’t know what was true and what was hype. My mind went almost instantly to a passage I remember reading once in the Bible. Something Jesus had said about the earth’s final days, "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars." I honestly half-expected the Rapture to happen that very day.

I called out to Jesus for the first time in my life that night. I had always been a spiritual, even religious person. But that night, as I broke down, sobbing harder than I can ever remember sobbing, I begged Him for His help. Like everybody else, I had questioned my own mortality that day. I had done a job once down at the World Trade Center. Only once, but what if it had been on this day? It could have been me. I worried about where I would go. Had I been good enough to get into Heaven? I certainly believed that there was such a place. Had I done it well enough to deserve to be let in? I had been shaken to my very core, and I begged Jesus to forgive me and to bless me, and to wash me clean by His blood. I renewed and reinvigorated my faith that night. A faith which I still pursue with a hunger unlike anything I have ever known.

This September 11 was one of quiet reflection for me. I had to pick up a bunch of gear from a company in Litchfield, Connecticut, so the whole day was spent in a van on the interstate. I listened to remembrances on the radio. Don Imus played excerpts from his show this date last year, reminding me of the immediate confusion and non-comprehension that came with terrorism’s arrival on American soil. I heard Neal Young’s song, Let’s Roll for the first time and found tears unexpectedly in my eyes. I turned the radio off for awhile and tried talking to God, but found that my mind was too muddled to form any kind of tangible thought. I opted for silence, allowing my mind to drift from subject to subject.

I thought of the little details from that day. I thought about the four-hour wait with my future brother-in-law Chris to get on a ferry back to New Jersey. I remembered how I had never heard New York so quiet. I thought of Frank from Nutley, who stood in line with us, and walked with us the two miles from Weehawken to the Hoboken PATH station. I remembered giving an interview to some guy with a video camera. I wonder if it ever made it into the news or a documentary. I remembered checking my voicemail and hearing a message from somebody who had dialed a wrong number, begging Luke to call her back and tell her he was all right. She never left her number.

I tend not to give much weight to "remembrance days," which Americans especially tend to celebrate with more vigor than holy days. Memorial Day means a three-day weekend with barbecues to me. Veterans Day is just another workday. President’s Day and Martin Luther King Day always meant extra days to play in the snow with no school. I really expected to breeze through 9-11-02 like any other day. Yet I found myself watching every news special, whether it was on Dateline or Nova. With each one, the emotions that I thought had been dealt with within the last year kept rising to the surface. I couldn’t get enough. I needed to re-experience 9-11 as much as possible. I too needed to remember.

I began to wonder what this day would be called in the future. After all they can’t just keep calling it "September 11." At least not on the calendar. December 7 is called "Pearl Harbor Day," but in this case, three places saw tragedy, so it can’t be just, "World Trade Center Day." Lauren seemed to think that, based on the theme of the television all day Wednesday, it will be called, "America Remembers Day." I wonder how they’ll treat this day next year. Will they do large-scale memorials every year, or only this year? I wonder if our grandchildren will treat this day the same way we treat December 7. Will they understand why it’s a day that America Remembers?

September 11, 2002 has finally come and gone. Wounds that had not quite healed have been reopened. Perhaps they will never heal. How could they with so much footage capable of ripping away any emotional bandage? For myself, I fluctuate daily between finding it impossible to remember life before the towers fell and finding it impossible to believe that they are gone forever. My faith has been tested, but is stronger than ever. I have stories that guarantee my grandkids will never fall asleep without a nightlight. But, I guess I’m getting along like most everyone in this country. I’m still haunted by the memories of that day, but all in all, I’m doing just fine.