100 Words - 55

I’m a NYer. I began volunteering at ground zero two days after the attack. Initially there was very little security. Two friends and I just walked down to the site and started helping. We ferried snacks and coffee from the Red Cross stations to the workers on the pile. The Pile. The 6 story high, still smoking, pile of rubble. Once security tightened I began working with the Red Cross. I remember sitting with a firefighter over coffee at 3am, he looked up and said, “I’m fucked up.” Normal human reaction, I said. I hope it helped him feel heard.

--from ISO the Golden Egg

100 Words - 54

I was emcee for my university's hosting of Stephen Covey in the days following 9/11. I asked if his principle "seek first to understand; then to be understood" still stood.

I was looking for profound encompassment of the "good and the bad," to find the elusive Unity of polar opposites.

Instead, he vilified Bin Laden.

My hopes for energetic healing were not realized. I knew it would be unpopular and not understood by the audience, but I do think it's the Truth. Great spiritual teachers, including Jesus, advocated non-judgment and forgiveness even in the presence of extreme cruelty.

--from Weebles Wobblog

100 Words - 53

It was my third week of teaching middle school language arts, after a decade working at a newspaper. The eighth-grade clerk told me before first period that something was happening, so I turned on the news and watched it with my class.

We watched the planes hit, over and over again. Saw the first tower collapse right before our eyes. Thirty-five normally wild, rambunctious 13-year-olds were stunned into silence.

Then one of them asked, “Are we at war, Mrs. Brassfield?”

I taught language arts. Commas and verb tenses. Similes and metaphors. Not war.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t know.”

--from It's Either Sadness or Euphoria

100 Words - 52

September 11th dawned sunny, bright, and clear... we walked to the polls to vote in our local election, pushing our 2 year old in his stroller... at 9:30, saw a small notice on Yahoo, a plane has hit Twin Towers.... husband calls, there is going to be a war... glued to the TV set, even the commentators can't believe it when the tower falls... then the next... pick up son early from daycare, husband comes home early from work, we walk around town... town is quiet, day is still sunny, bright, and clear, but everything has changed.

--from Motherthoughts

100 Words - 51

I remember taking my dogs out into the backyard and looking up in the sky. It was a beautiful day. The sky was unbelievable blue, barely a cloud to be seen. And the sky was QUIET. I remember that so well. Looking into the sky and seeing and hearing nothing. I remember standing there crying, wondering how in such an amazingly beautiful world, such horrible things could occur. That evening my husband, my brother and I drove to the highest point in our area and watched the smoke come off the towers from New York. And I cried some more.

--from The Daily Doings of Mr. Silly and Little Miss Trouble

100 Words - 50

“The World Trade center has been hit by an airplane…” What? Where were the morning talkers duking it out? Pulled into parking lot, got the keys to unlock the store. Put on jazz station we always play; no jazz. News, talking, what the hell is going on? Business next door, her rock station was talking too? TV on in office, OMG. My mother called from Upstate crying, she was okay, but was I? Husband arrived from school, we locked store, stayed in front of TV for a week. No one will ever be the same…

--from Wishing 4 One

100 Words - 49

I pull onto the freeway around 8:00 a.m. Pacific time, flipping the radio to NPR. Two broadcasters speak in urgent tones about streams of people walking over a bridge out of Manhattan. It is clear something is terribly wrong, but I don't know what. My brother lives in NYC. I am frightened. It will be several minutes before they finally recap the morning's events. On days like September 11, our lives suddenly divide into before and after. Seven years later, this is my clearest memory: the elongated moment of knowing my world was about to change before it actually did.

--from Production, Not Reproduction

100 Words - 48

What I most remember about September 11, 2001 is the day after. I had to teach in my first grade classroom on September 12. I wondered how I was going to explain such horror to my first-graders, especially when I didn’t understand it myself. They just kept asking why: Why would someone want to hurt so many people? Why would they want to hurt themselves? Then a fighter jet from the local Air Force base rumbled overhead as it patrolled the Boston sky and I saw fear on their faces. That’s what I remember most---six year olds looking up at the ceiling, wondering if a plane was going to crash down onto them, too.

--from One Good Egg

100 Words - 47

I'm a New York native. It was an office building to me not a tourist site. It was my marker when I walked around the Financial District. I shopped in its mall. I remember with my senses. The sound of a city that became quiet, its heartbeat slowed. The sight of tanks going down the avenues. Candles, fliers, flowers and fighter jets overhead. Hymns at Father Mychael Judge's memorial. I knew him. But the worst memory is the smell. I smelled chemicals and Something Else, the Smell No One Wanted to Name. I will never forget that smell. Burning Flesh.

--from Forever Reaching

100 Words - 46

When my assistant arrived, she said a plane hit the tower. Remarkable, but we didn't worry. I called Wes, said to leave time for slow subways. Then plane two hit and the radio called it terrorism. I turned on the TV in my library, related collapses to the principal. I couldn't reach Wes. He was on the subway, trapped underground, evacuated, covered in ash. He walked home over the bridge and when he called I collapsed in gratitude. I walked a student home and he asked to stop, a moment on the bridge as the smoke billowed out toward Brooklyn.

--from Unwellness

100 Words - 45

I’d been married for only eight days and in US soil for six. That morning, as a happy new wife, I was wearing a long nightgown (a wedding gift from my grandma) and kissed my husband goodbye as he left for work. After brewing some coffee, I turned on our TV, which was on the floor for lack of furniture, to witness the terrifying image of the second tower being hit by the airplane. My family was entirely in South America, horribly concerned with our safety. I couldn’t reach them or my husband because all phone lines were dead.

--from Dancing with Gaia

100 Words - 44

We'd just bought our townhouse in suburban DC; we'd just married on August 12th. I'd begun work in Baltimore on August 20th, walking distance to the Baltimore World Trade Center. Husband stayed home September 11th to await delivery of our first furniture purchase. The news came through and downtown Baltimore began evacuating. My new boss was a jerk. He told everyone he planned to keep working. I didn't know what to do. I had no leave yet. I left anyway and arrived home to find husband watching CNN. On the new couch. We sat there together all day, watching, crying.

--from Not-Ever-Still Life with Girls

100 Words - 43

As the fire grew bigger, the chances of the buildings staying up grew smaller. We were watching as the buildings started to collapse. I sat there crying because I knew we had lost all those firefighters and police officers who went running in when everyone else was running out. Those brave heroes didn’t stop to think they might not live through the day. They donned their gear and their only question was, “Where do you need me?” Those men who went into the World Trade center that day saved many lives by giving their lives that day. Please remember them.

--from The Fertile Infertile

100 Words - 42

The phone rang at 6:15 am in Los Angeles; it was my husband from his office. He asked me if I heard the news, "What news? That Michael Jordan is coming out of retirement?" I said glancing at the morning paper. "Turn on the TV." I did and I saw the Twin Towers fall on the screen and our world change forever for our two sons and all of us. I remember how quiet it was that day with no airplanes flying overhead as if we were observing a sacred silence and sharing our grief from three thousand miles away.

--from A Sense of Humour is Essential

100 Words - 41

A plane just flew into the WTC.

That's not funny; my dad works there.

I'm not kidding.

My mind starts churning. What's going on? Is it my dad's tower? Crap, is he in the one with or without the antenna?

No phones worked, not at any of his offices. I had no idea where my dad was. I was in college and in charge of a dorm. I had to hold it together.

I called the school my mom had JUST started teaching at.

Hi, I'm Erin, Mrs. E's daughter.

Erin, your dad is fine, he just called here.

--from Seriously?!?!?

100 Words - 40

I worked the night shift and was watching the news before I fell asleep that morning. It was incomprehensible. I turned it on right before the Pentagon was hit and saw the towers fall. All I could think about was the skyline. My first trip to New York was the summer of 2001. I fell in love with the way the NY skyline looked. All I could think of was how it would never look the same. The other thing I remember was the quiet in the following days. It was like the volume was turned down on the world.

--from Jenn's Journal

100 Words - 39

I was at the YMCA, running my morning 5 miles. I listen to music while I run, so the TVs hanging in front of me were picture and caption only, so I made up my own mind in what was happening. I saw the hole and the caption of “airplane hits tower” and thought “Good God, how could a pilot MISS a building?” thinking it was a Cessna. I went back to running and wasn’t paying attention when I saw the second airliner hit. I turned off the treadmill and made my way home to mourn with our nation.

--from The New Life of Nancy

100 Words - 38

I had worked an 3-11pm, hadn't gotten to bed until the wee hours of the morning. I got up late and went to an appointment. I got in the car, had my radio on. Jesse Ventura said he didn't think Minnesotans were in danger. "Of what?" I entered the mall by Radio Shack. People were standing there, watching the TV's. I was really confused. I watched as they replayed an airplane flying into one of the Towers. My mind couldn't comprehend it. I asked the person next to me what was going on. He told me. I cried.

--from Awake on the Night Shift

100 Words - 37

Fear. Worry. Concern. Does this make me look fat? What says happy grad-school-attending alumnus?

That morning, I was picking my outfit for a college alumni event. I was worried about what clothes I should wear, how my hair was looking and whether I’d be able to find the hotel downtown. I heard the news on Howard Stern – thought it was some new skit they were doing. I turned on the TV and watched the 2nd plane hit the Tower. Fighter jets from Andrews screamed over campus as they scrambled to guard the White House, the Capital, home.

Concern. Worry. Fear.

--from Sell Crazy Someplace Else

100 Words - 36

I would like to return to September 12.

Before the death of thousands became a rallying cry for opportunists, I thought of those citizens in other parts of the country as Americans. Now, I have to make a conscious effort not to divide them into "red-staters" and "blue-staters".

On September 12, I wanted to help. I bought socks for the K-9 units, baked for those who were giving blood. I needed to help those heroes who ran into the buildings as they fell.

I want to see us all as Americans again. I want to return to September 12.

--from Journeywoman