today is 9/11.

it has been nine years since the twin towers fell. it never really hit me what today means to so many people. i don't know anyone who was there when it happened. i don't know anyone who has family who was there. or anyone really with any connection to it. i don't remember when it happened. at all. i have never watched those films. it is just a day i honor when it comes up but then don't do much.

then i read Meg Cabot's story about when it happened. and that was the first time i felt like crying. i probably would have if Maeve wasn't there. oh my god. oh my god. oh my.

http://www.megcabot.com/2010/09/nine-years-ago/

but here are the parts that i almost cried at because i am going to read that whole thing again:

"Sirens started up. It was the engine from the firehouse across the street from my apartment building. It was a very small firehouse. All the guys used to sit outside it on folding chairs on nice days, joshing with the neighbors who were walking their dogs, and with my doormen. The old ladies on my street always brought them cookies.

9/11/01 was a very, very nice day. The sky was a very pure blue and it was warm outside.

Now all the firemen from the station across from my apartment building were rushing out to the fire downtown.

Every last one of them would be dead in an hour. But none of us knew that then."

"Another co-worker from NYU, my friend Jack, who used to train the RAs (he would ask me to “interrupt” his training with a fake administrative temper tantrum—“Why are you in this room? You never reserved it!”—and then he and I would “fight” about it, and then after I left he would ask the RAs what would have been a better way to handle the situation . . . and by the way, did any of them remember what I was wearing? After they’d all tell him, he’d have me come back into the room, and point out that every single of them was wrong about what I’d had on. This was to show how unreliable witness testimony can be) did manage to reach his spouse, who worked in the Trade Center, that day.

His wife had just walked eighty floors to reach the ground safely, only to realize the guys in her IT department were still up there, backing up data for the company (oh, you sweet, hapless IT guys). Once she reached the ground, and saw how bad things really were, she tried calling them to tell them to forget backing up and just COME DOWN, but couldn’t get hold of them.

So she went back up to MAKE THEM come down, because who doesn’t love their IT guys?

“Why did you go back up?” Jack asked her, when he finally reached her. By that time she, along with the IT guys, had become trapped in the fire and smoke.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” she said. Of course it did. She was married to Jack. Jack would have done the same thing. She told Jack to say good bye to their twins toddlers for her. That was the last he ever heard from her.

I can never think of this, or of Jack’s happy, cheerful greeting every time I saw him, or the stunned looks on the RAs faces when they realized we’d pulled one over on them, without wanting to cry."

"But another friend–a girl I’d worked with when I’d been a receptionist in my husband’s office, a girl whom I’d helped pick out a wedding dress, and who, since the big day, had quit her job to raise the four kids she’d had–wasn’t so lucky. She never saw her husband, who worked at the Trade Center, again after he left for work that day."

"I set up my Playstation for Jake, who was seven or so at the time, to use, while Shai, just turning 4, and I did a puzzle on my floor. Both kids were worried about Mr. Fluff, their pet rabbit, whom they’d been forced to leave behind in their apartment, because there’d been no time to get him (their parents had run from work and grabbed both kids from school).

“Do you think he’s all right?” Jake wanted to know.

At the time, I didn’t see how anything south of Canal Street could be alive, but I told Jake I was sure Mr. Fluff was fine.

This was when Shai and I had the following conversation:

“Are planes going to fly into THIS building?” Shai wanted to know. She was crying as she looked out the windows of my thirteenth floor apartment.

Me: “No. No planes are going to fly into this building.”

Shai (still crying): “How do you know?”

Me: “Because all the planes are grounded. No more planes are allowed in the air.”

Shai: “Ever?”

Me: “No. Just until the bad guys who did this get caught.”

Shai: “Who’s going to catch the bad guys?”

Me: “The police will catch them.”

Shai: “No, they won’t. All the police are dead. I saw them going into the building that just fell down.”

Me (trying not to cry): “Shai. Not all the police are dead.”

Shai (crying harder): “Yes, they ARE. I SAW THEM.”

Me (showing Shai a picture from my family photo album of a policeman in his uniform): “Shai, this is my brother, Matt. He’s a policeman. And he’s not dead, I promise. And he, and other policemen like him, and probably even the Army, will catch the bad guys.”

Shai (no longer crying): “Okay.”

And she went back to her puzzle."

"While I was wondering if I’d ever see my husband again, Fred, Jen’s employee, the EMT who had ridden his bike downtown to see if there was anything he could do, found something to do:

He commandeered a city bus, and started cramming as many civilians onto it as he could. This was before the buildings fell, before anyone had any idea those buildings COULD fall, when the police and firemen were still streaming into them, thinking they could get people out.

While Fred was commandeering the bus, the crew that he normally volunteered with were inside one of those buildings, helping people down the stairs. Fred couldn’t find them, so someone told him to drive a bus they’d found. Fred was mad. He didn’t want to be outside driving a bus, he wanted to be inside, saving people.

Fred’s entire team was crushed to death.

Like many rescue workers who lost coworkers in the attack, Fred seemed to feel guilty about having survived, while his friends had not. Even when we all pitched in and bought him a new bike (after his old one got buried at Ground Zero), Fred couldn’t seem to shake his sadness. It was like he didn’t believe he’d done any good that day.

“All I did,” he said, “was drive a stupid bus.”

But that’s not all he did. Because remember Luz’s son?

Well, he showed up at my apartment not long after Jake and Shai and their parents did. Luz grabbed him and kissed him and shook him and cried, and when she finally let go of him, he told his story:

He had been heading towards—not away from–the towers, because he’d wanted to help, he said. A lot like Fred.

But suddenly, from out of nowhere, someone grabbed him from behind, and threw him onto a stupid bus.

“But I want to stay and help!” Luz’s son yelled at the guy who’d grabbed him.

“Not today,” Fred said.

And he drove Luz’s son, and all the other students from that community college to safety, just before the towers fell."

can you imagine all those people? walking down the street. running away. and the people who couldn't run? oh my god.