The Day The World Stopped

On that clear, perfectly blue September morning I had agreed (or, more accurately, my boss had asked me to agree) to meet Doug, our Facilities Manager, in the front parking lot at 8:45. We were to drive to our other factory in Garfield, New Jersey, where the better part of a run of a new linear lighting fixture had been set up in the showroom, just waiting for me to art direct and shoot. Doug would assemble and reassemble as needed, and Ron, an engineer who worked in Garfield, had been volunteered to be our hand model. The final images would be used in a “how to install” guide we were to develop but contractors would probably never use because contractors hardly ever use installation instructions. Regardless, we were taking Doug’s minivan because he had room for the 8’ fixture samples we were going to need to complete the run…and my little rusted out Toyota could neither fit an 8’ fixture sample nor Doug, who is not exactly petite.

He is not exactly chatty, nor am I. We’d taken several trips to Garfield together, and after a few obligatory exchanges about what Husband was up to or how his kids were doing in college, we’d sink into collegial silence and listen to the radio.

I’d come in early that morning to gather up the notes from the pre-shoot meeting, the spec sheets we’d already developed for the product, and various other files I thought we would need. I was just about to go downstairs and meet Doug but at about 8:40, I started getting this odd, almost queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and hunted about for some Rolaids. This made me a couple of minutes late, and Doug was idling by the front door, loading the last of the samples into the back of his van.

“Well, at least the trip down should be entertaining,” he said, grinning (sometimes hard to discern through his full red beard and mustache). “I just heard on the radio that some yahoo crashed his plane into the Trade Center. They’ll be talking about it all morning.”

“Great,” I said, having images of one of those prop jobs gone awry.

It wasn’t until we got on the road that we heard what really happened. Only one tower had been struck so far. We skipped our normal obligatory exchanges and went right to the silence, riveted to the radio.

It wasn’t bad enough yet to consider turning back.

And then it got worse.

He worried about his daughter, whom he’d just driven to Pratt the weekend before. I worried about my younger brother, who was working in Manhattan.

We couldn’t reach either of them by cell phone. We couldn’t reach either factory, or my boss, who was working from home that day. We couldn’t reach anyone.

We were nearly to the Woodbury exit on the Thruway when the second tower fell.

“I’m turning back,” Doug said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like working today.”

I agreed, the tiny queasiness in my stomach growing into full-on carsickness. I opened the window. We were also hearing speculations of roads and bridges closing all around the tri-state area.

We returned to the Highland factory to find cars streaming out of the parking lot, shocked looks on faces.

And our usual receptionist wasn’t at the front desk. Instead, Cathy, the Human Resources Manager, was filling in. She told us what was happening. Icy cool as always, under any condition, she’d just announced a few minutes earlier that anyone who felt they needed to leave – particularly people who had to cross bridges or drive long distances or wanted to pick up their children from school – could go.

I went upstairs to find my boss’s assistant, Janice, in a full-on panic. “We’re under attack!” she yelled, throwing things into her purse. “Oh my God, we’re under attack!!”

Janice had been in the military.

“I might never get home! I have to cross the bridge! Oh, my God! We’re at war!!”

And then Janice was gone.

Meanwhile, I stayed. I called Husband. I called my whole family. I tried my brother again. I asked Husband to keep trying his number. And finally, finally, word came, via my mother. Who’d gotten a call somehow, someway, that just said, “I’m OK.”

Breathing a little easier, I started calmly gathering my own things. I didn’t have to cross a bridge or travel a long distance or pick up kids out of school. I just wanted to be home, with my husband.

Work wasn’t that important.

Then my boss called. She needed me to draft a press release. Something to go out to all of our reps that we’re all fine, and our NYC reps are fine (crap, I hadn’t even thought about them, with their offices almost in the shadow of the towers) and that we were closing for the day.

I took her dictation, then directions as she walked me through the process of sending a batch e-mail to all of our representatives.

And then I went home. One of the last to leave.

Husband and I were riveted to the television. Those images, over and over and over.
In the following days (Do you remember those, when everyone was nice to everyone else? When no one cut you off in traffic and everyone said please and thank you?) I was almost bursting with the urge to help. I didn’t have much money. I wasn’t physically capable of volunteering to go sift through debris, as some of my neighbors were. So I did what I could. I threw cash at anyone out shaking a can. I donated to the firemen’s fund. And I was determined to give blood. I waited on line for an hour only to be told that I couldn’t be a candidate because of a recent virus. I almost cried.

And the images kept coming. And coming. And then psychologists came on the news and told people not to watch the images so much. And what to tell your children.

And the skies were quiet.

I tried to be normal. I tried to write, but the project I was working on was a comic novel and it felt too irreverent to work on that at the time. How could I feel funny when two hours south of me, thousands of people had lost their lives? I tried to do my job. But the biggest project on my plate was, with the help of a freelancer called in to do the research, to craft articles for our web site about some of our nicer installations. And most them were in the Towers. After the freelancer bailed (“None of the phone numbers were answering, so I didn’t see the point”), I opened JPEG after JPEG. Goldman Sachs. Bear Stearns. Gone. All gone. I couldn’t even let myself think about the people who didn’t work there any more.

The people. I didn’t lose anyone I knew, directly. I knew people who knew people. The mayor of Poughkeepsie lost her husband, who’d gone down that day for a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World.

The stories of survival amazed me. The people who, by some fluke or mix-up or simply because it had been such a beautiful September day, didn’t make it to work on time.
And we’d been in Manhattan a couple of days earlier to see the Blue Man group. We were in Grand Central, we took the subway downtown, the city was mobbed. What if it had happened then?

And the question nobody dared to ask and the one we’re still asking, five years later:

Will it happen again?