Even Now

I can remember the heartstopping disbelief as my (now ex) husband and I were driving north to visit his relatives in Canada and we heard the terrible news. What if....If only....

As I kissed my daughter this morning before I dropped her off at preschool, I thought to myself for what has to be the millionth time, "Thank you God."

We had driven to New Jersey for a visit with the family. What a fun trip. We crossed the country, headed east from Texas. We stopped in Nashville on Saturday and then got up Sunday morning and drove to Washington D.C. I had never been to D.C. so I was as excited as a little kid. We stayed in a beautiful hotel less than six blocks from the Capitol.

I can remember the Korean War Memorial. Walking through that grassy space and those slightly oversized soldiers sent chills down my spine. I have always been the kind of person to choke up at a really beautiful performance of the National Anthem and the Posting of the Colors brings tears every time. So you can imagine seeing the reminders in our Nation's capital was a little overwhelming.

We talked about staying in D.C. another day, as the White House doesn't do tours on Mondays but decided to go on to New Jersey. On the way out of town, traffic was so bad headed straight north that we went around the city. We had the chance to see the Pentagon and I took a picture from the car. I can remember pouting a little because there were so many things that I wanted to see and wishing that we'd decided to stay another day. Why rush on to New Jersey? We were about to spend two weeks with the family. Who knew when we'd get back to D.C.?

But we pressed on.

Typically, we have taken the day after we arrived in New Jersey to go into New York and do the tourist thing. My ex-husband hates the City. I imagine it would be a little like if we went into Dallas with someone that had never been out of their little hometown. It would be really neat and big and new and novel to them, but we'd be bored because it is so familiar. But, I was a complete tourist, in love with all of the places I'd seen in the movies. Anyway, we always took the train into NYC and started at Penn Station in Uptown Manhattan. Manhattan is so big, though, that we never made it to the places in Lower Manhattan (like the Stock Exchange and the World Trade Center) before it was time for us to leave. So, we had decided to go into NYC the next time and start at the World Trade Center and work our way up. That was the plan.

Tuesday morning (9/11), we woke up and decided to forgo the NYC trip and go on to Canada to visit with the relatives in Montreal. So, we piled in our Tahoe and headed north (again), at around 7:30am.

We were listening to music CDs and didn't hear the inital news. Inbetween switching out CDs though, we heard Howard Stern sounding VERY serious so that (naturally) caught our attention. We were listening as the second plane hit the south tower, when the plane hit the Pentagon and then when the towers collapsed. To not be able to see but only imagine such a horrifying event was beyond awful. I can still remember my ex looking at me and saying, "this was not an accident." He looked at me and said, "they are going to close the borders." We drove about 9o mph the rest of the way to the border and, sure enough, we were one of the last people through before they closed the borders. Only once we arrived at the home of family did we see the carnage that was taking place in New York, Washington and in a grassy field in Pennsylvania.

All day, we watched the horror over and over, unable to tear ourselves away from those horrible pictures on the news.

Then, I remembered. We should have been there. My entire family thought my ex and I had gone into New York City that morning. They knew how excited I was about seeing the World Trade Center and they hadn't heard from me. After a few frantic calls and lots of reassurance that we were "safe" - the magnitude began to truly hit me.

If we had done what we had always done and what we had, until 7:00 that morning, planned to do, my ex and I should have been in the World Trade Center at 9am on September 11. Thank God for changed minds.

As we drove back from Canada on the 15th, we were numb from all of the news coverage. We wanted to go home, to Texas. We saw something incredible - American Flags - EVERYWHERE. You couldn't find a flag in any store because they had all sold out. In the four days that we'd been in Canada, there wasn't a flag left to buy on the East Coast. They were on every house, shop, car, overpass - you name it. It was awe inspiring. As we drove West on the way home, it was like that the entire way.

Now, five years have gone by and a lot of that feeling of unity and patriotism has dulled back to pre-9/11 days. But I still remember. I will always remember and be thankful that we changed our mind and our plans and, perhaps, it saved our lives that day.