Here There and Everywhere

September 11; A Day of Infamy

I was in Seattle for a wedding, staying with my sister. My nephew and I were up early, and he called to me, “Come see something! This is so weird. A plane just flew into the World Trade Center!”

I didn’t believe him, but I went to his room across the hall to see. As we watched, the second plane flew into the second tower.

“That wasn’t an accident,” I said. “It’s not that easy to fly straight into a building.”

But mostly, I was thinking “Will I ever see my husband again?”

We were living in Germany. The phone lines were blocked. I couldn’t hear his voice.

My sister got a call, and she left for work. My nephew left for work. I had a coffee date with one of my former professors; she never showed up. She called me later to say she was stuck in the ferry line; the ferries weren’t operating, and neither was her phone until now.

So I hit the quilt shop. I knew I would spend the rest of the day rivited to the television screen, trying to learn what had just happened. We had seen it, we kept seeing it, over and over, but none of us could understand what we were seeing.

The New Yorker cover, above, captures it perfectly – we were all in the dark.

I was scared, and I felt angry. I wanted to DO something. I wanted to have something positive to come out of this horror. I designed a quilt. I cut out the pieces. I hand stitched all the pieces. It got me through.

Maybe late that night, AdventureMan was able to call me. We still didn’t know exactly what was going on or if the planes would ever fly again. I held my breath in the coming days, as my flight reservation day approached.

I was on one of the first planes out. I remember the pilot coming on as we were departing, and telling us to introduce ourselves to each other, to be neighbors on our flight, that we would help one another if anything went wrong. It was greatly moving, unexpectedly emotional.

September 11 is one of those days when everyone knows where he or she was when the planes hit. Everyone has a story. On our first safari to Botswana, we met a New Yorker who had been working in downtown New York and who had to walk miles to get home and somehow ended up barefoot. She said the walk was the best part, being alive was the best part, and that the streets, on that day of horror, were filled with people who were kind and helpful to one another.

September 10, 2026 - Posted by intlxpatr | Character, Circle of Life and Death, Civility, Community, Cultural, ExPat Life, Family Issues, History, Interconnected, Living Conditions, Stranger in a Strange Land, Survival, Travel | 9-11, New York City, September 11, terror, Twin Towers