I Remember When

I was on the highway on the way to work listening to a local morning show on the radio. It was my habit to listen to NPR at home as I got ready for work in the second bedroom of the tiny duplex we lived in at the time. I’m sure the news would have been much more believe-able had I heard the news on NPR. I continued on to work in a sort of numb state. It wasn’t much further: just one more exit, one left turn and one right turn before turning into the parking lot of the office building. The news websites were down and the radio reception in the building wasn’t great. We literally attached a coat hanger to the TV that we used to show new hires some required videos and rolled the cart it was on as close to the window as we could get. There were only about four TVs in the building, so people were up and down our hallway all day long.

How have the events of that fateful day changed my life? Not nearly as dramatically as so many others. I thankfully didn’t know anybody directly who lost their life that day.

We’d gotten engaged only three days before. I was still reeling with joy and excitement. Yet, it seemed so superficial to be excited about it amidst the horror happening around us. Looking back, our 14 month engagement was probably due in part to the fact that I just couldn’t get in to planning gear for a while. Well, that and the fact that we were married in the fall during football season and had to pick an away game weekend.

What I think of most each September 11th is the absolute fear that I had not knowing where one friend was. We hadn’t spoken for years. I knew she’d moved to NYC with her new husband, but had no idea where they lived or worked.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get through to her even if I could find contact information, I reached out to two people that I was certain would be part of a phone tree to share the news. One of those two people worked for the DA’s office, so I was able to find a work number for her online. The other was her mom, and I still had her phone number in my filofax (yes, it was 5 years ago, pre-PDA for me). I broke down crying when her mom called me back to tell me she’d heard from her and they were fine. Turns out that they were scheduled to move from Brooklyn to Connecticut the next day and had both been at home. Her mom shared this news with me as though I knew, and I played along.

In the weeks and months following, we picked up the pieces of our friendship and started to put them back together via email. We were both happy to be a part of each other’s lives again, but were also cautious. I shared with her some of the trepidation I felt as I was opening myself up again. In the years that have followed, we’ve continued to grow. I’m now pleased to call her and her husband both friends. And I can’t wait to meet the newest member of their family later this year. Here’s to you, Donna.