9/11 Remembered

"September 11, what where you doing?"

Chicago, September 11th, 2001, I was off of work, my children were in school, the weather was very calm, I had picked up the girls T.V from the neighborhood repair shop the day before, however, did not try it out until the following morning 9/11. I wanted to see if the T.V was repaired so I turned it on in the kids room. I was relieved that it was working and intrigued about what I thought was a movie preview. I soon realized it was not! I kept watching and all I could think of was "what a terrible accident". What I saw soon after is a mind awakening experience, a second plane caught hitting the twin towers live on Television! This is Terror at it's worse! Now we know this is no accident! My horror turned into rage! How can this be happening? How could this get by us? What are we doing about this? What is yet to come? The questions piled up with anger and embarrassment as an American. Thinking that the worse was not over, I proceeded to remove my children from school and thought about how I could protect them in my own country from this ruthless invitation to war. Living in the City, use to airplanes flying over my apartment 2 by 2 every 5 minutes headed into Ohare Airport. The silence of the skies was an erie feeling. Although this continued for a few weeks, I imagined a new different world without those beautiful machines I have so awed since I was a kid. I would stop on a regular basis just to watch them fly over my head. This was taken from me along with my security in my own country-The United States of America! That day I felt a few stars and stripes fall from my beloved flag.

Notes:

• With the time I had off of work, as a photographer, I was impressed with the twin towers and was itching to take a few pictures. I was planning on taking a one day trip to new york and return the same day. The goal was to take pictures of the Towers, find an observatory deck, and view new york from one of the towers and return home that night. That night never happened as I did not follow through with that idea. I know I would have been either on a stuck flight or on the Towers, or near the grounds somewhere in New York watching things unfold.
• Something that has intrigued me since this has happened is: How come there has been no stories done on people that were supposed to be in the Twin Towers that fateful day but, for some reason, did not either go to work, was stuck in traffic on the way and should have been there, changed plans like myself and decided not to go that day, were on vacation elsewhere, just around the corner getting coffee, or something that led to them not being at ground zero.
• I was having some dreams that stopped a month or two before 9/11. These dreams were frequent and strange. I was in a building trapped as an explosion ripped the place apart. The dream was vivid with tons of fires surrounding every inch of space. Sometime the dream was a plane crashing into a building and exploding on impact. I thought, I am having these dreams because so many planes flew directly over my building on descending approach as the airport was not far away and they were always landing non stop at Ohare airport. It's a mystery to me why I did not follow through with going to New York, however, the dreams and the aftermath are a strong reminder of life limited!
• I am not claiming to be clairvoyant, just describing my story. I did have a dream the other day of President Obama being assassinated, however, I saved him.