9-11-09

I spent the day out in the back woods of upstate New York. We were on a field trip and had no idea anything had happened until we got to PRI (Paleontologic Research Institute, not Public Radio International) in Ithaca, and a friend there told us. It was before all of the rerouted planes had managed to find landing spaces, but after both towers had come down. One of the men who worked at PRI was really nervous because his dad had flown out of Newark that morning, and was unreachable. I got a little nervous then because my dad was doing biweekly trips to and from Newark at that point in time. I called his cell phone, and it went straight to voice mail. I called my mom on her cell phone and at home, but she didn't answer. I was scared my dad had been on one of the planes. The details were still really blurry at that point. We still didn't really know what had happened. I remember the guy at PRI finally getting a call from his father who had been rerouted to Canada. I finally got a hold of my parents that evening - my mom had shoulder surgery that afternoon, but no one had told me. My dad had watched the towers fall (because he often left CBS news up as a background to his work), and then had to take my mom in for her surgery. She'd left her phone at home, and my dad had turned his off because he was in the hospital. No one thought it was a big deal. I thought my dad might have been dead. Fortunately (thanks in large part to my mom's surgery), my dad didn't have a business trip that day. My heart goes out to everyone who did - to all the people just doing their jobs, to the families going to visit each other, to everyone who lost someone that day.