by Brian Jeffiers

Created on: June 03, 2008

It should have been just another day for me, as it should have for millions of others. I was watching the early phases of construction on our new house on September 11, 2001, waiting for a co-worker to pick me up for an out-of-town project.

She was running late, and in that pre-cell phone era, I had only a pager for my office to contact me, and my secretary, hired in 1960, didn't use that, either. Eventually I returned to my in-laws' house across the road, where we were living as we built, and called the office.

The event had been canceled, so I went to our bedroom to change clothes. I sat on the bed to re-lace my work boots, which I had polished the night before, and for some reason idly turned on CNN. It must have been around 9:30.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Both towers were burning; neither had yet fallen. I can't remember anything that the newscasters said, and even the sequence of events escapes me now. Soon they were reporting a plane down in Pennsylvania, and another impact at the Pentagon. The Supreme Court had been evacuated.

A thought came to me: When will it stop?

I thought immediately of a retired aunt and uncle who traveled overseas fairly frequently. Were they at home? Were they on a trip?

My pager vibrated, spelling out my brother's work phone number. I called him. "Osama bin Laden," he said. "Wait and see. That's who's behind this."

Somewhere in there, the towers fell. I knew what had happened the minute the first collapsed, and a thought came to me: A lot of firemen just died.

I had hope that civilians had, for the most part, escaped. Surely from the second tower; who would stay and work in one megatower while the other, just yards away, was the site of a major terrorist catastrophe? Who could stay and work? They were scattering, I was sure, hailing taxis and pouring into subways, muttering Screw this, I'm going home.

It was not to be, of course. They had stayed at their offices when the first tower was hit, thinking it was a plane crash and nothing more, as I probably would have. As the day wore on, I remember the confusion and bewilderment changing more to shock, to a feeling that the whole thing was too absurd to be real, as though we could shake it away like the haze of interrupted sleep. But it was inescapable; every channel carried news through the day, and the internet coursed with news and, too soon, ridiculous conspiracy theories.

The day has faded and morphed into a political brickbat and a pair of wars on the sand and rocks half a world away. The young men and women come home broken and dead, struggling to contain an enemy that gladly blows up women and children to attack us.

When the last dust settled in three of our original thirteen colonies, it seemed that Tuesday that the end had finally come. Of course, we know now that it was only the beginning.

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