When A Sparrow Falls: Part One

It was a day none of us will ever forget. But for me, MY September 11 began the day after, and, seven years later, the wounds still bleed...

I had a dream last night where I got fired again...

It was actually pretty bad, worse than your standard nightmare.
This morning I feel unconsolably cold, melancholy and disturbed, as a result.
In it, I was once again in the middle of conflict at work, keenly aware that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried... I was going to drown at the hands of those who simply didn't want me around anymore.
Nothing is worse than that, because it's a losing battle.
A good person (and employee) should never quit when the going gets rough. But good people are bludgeoned daily for their efforts in trying to stay afloat...

I'm not sure I'll ever get away from the nightmares and dreams of loss.
I wonder, often, how many others can no longer lie their head on their pillow at night and experience the reward of deep, restorative sleep.
When I wake at night in a cold sweat, or in the wee morning hours to profound melancholy memories of the dream life I just traveled from, I wonder how many others are awake and lost at that same moment.
I try to draw comfort from that... but it's a vague, disturbing comfort.

My burden is in the waking hours, when I know, without a doubt, that I am blessed and there are far more others experiencing far more hurt and despair than I...
Confusion and pain leavened with guilt and shame...
I used to feel joy and peace when turning in for a night's sleep, and woke refreshed, excited and eager to start a new day...

When did that change? I know it was sudden. I have no diary or calendar in front of me as evidence, but I know, without a doubt, that even though I've always been a sensitive and thoughtful person, I was also happy, well-adjusted, ambitious and physically fit... in the years, months and days before that morning... The length of time it took me, however, to recognize I was in trouble was due to my strength and insistence that the growing pain, sense of loss and utter helplessness were all a result, a set of symptoms, of a particular cold or flu after the event, or due to a naturally awkward phase that accompanies turning 40-ish about that time, then a trip or stumble that winter that must have pulled a muscle...

The aches and pain never went away. They, and my growing sense of grief and panic, settled in to stay, to rob me of my life and happiness...
The closest I can come to establishing a DOC (date of change?) puts me in the window of events -- both global and personal -- surrounding a day that is now known as 9-11. September 11, 2001.


Something new, something very wrong, took up housekeeping in my body and mind that morning.
It changed EVERYTHING, only I was so busy trying to be strong, patriotic and positive that I neglected to recognize the CHANGE that was taking place deep inside...
It was easier to simply reassure myself that times were difficult, strange and powerful, and that what I was going through was simply an awareness of pain in the world. To look deeper and recognize the devastation in my heart and soul and physical body? That would have been selfish, in light of the very real traumas people at Ground Zero experienced on that terrible day...

This must be what it feels like to be wounded in battle... struck down and injured, but ashamed that we find ourselves unable to physically or spiritually move on and continue the fight. How does one make it to the First Aid tent for healing and relief when it is crowded with so many dead and dying? There is no nobility in that. The 'healers' there have no compassion for those without life-threatening wounds...

It would be childish to say, "What about ME? If I had died that day, THEN people would have called me a victim. If I had been there, and saved a life or more, I would have been a survivor, a hero.
For the first time in history, however, we WERE all 'there'. My television opened up a window from which I was able to gaze in shock and horror as the events unfolded in front of me.

My own living room was Ground Zero.

Even in writing this, at this moment, I am overwhelmed with a sense of wrong... who am I, to paint myself a victim of an event that destroyed -- literally DESTROYED -- so many lives and families? For a few moments that day, our country's proud eagle had been felled by an event that was so much bigger than any one of us... It was a time to unite, to gather strength in numbers and perform acts of heroism and courage....

But on the same day, the same moment, thousands and thousands of humble sparrows fell.
And no one noticed...

This is not the story I planned to write one day. This is not the life I planned to live one day.
But it is mine, all the same, and one that begins in the middle...

 The insurance company where I worked as an Internet developer was the biggest company I'd ever been employed by. I was proud of my new job, and happy and excited at the thought of settling in and spending the rest of my working life there.
It was great money. Great security, and a wonderful pension plan to look forward to when retirement loomed in a few decades. And I enjoyed the company of my immediate co-workers, although there were differences from the start.

I was a single mother with an eight year old son, no college background, and had been living between bouts of paycheck-to-paycheck at smaller businesses; there were sporadic episodes where we lived at the mercy of public aid and food stamps. With the exception of my boss, who was slightly older than I, our team was predominantly twenty-something and single college grads with a penchant for impulsively trying out different 'happy hour' spots after work, every other afternoon; this was something I simply could not work into my schedule without advance planning and cooperation with my babysitter.

Despite these things, this job was the answer to our prayers. Not only was I to be paid well for my skills and experience in a field I loved, but I anticipated beginning long friendships here (being the friendly worker I was). Just as importantly, I expected - and needed - to find my place, to simply 'belong' and be valued.

Most of my co-workers, including my boss, were locals. Although we'd never met before outside of the workplace, we had common interests and frequently found we shared a lot: favorite restaurants, schools we'd attended, parks we spent leisure time at on weekends, yearly events we enjoyed.
Within a week, I felt accepted and liked by all of my co-workers, and had easily joined them for daily lunch-break jaunts.

It was probably about the fourth month that the disparities between me and my co-workers became more awkwardly apparent. They were inexplicably resistant to anyone who wasn't cut from the single and youthful college party 'cloth', no matter how hard I tried to assure them I was still fun and youthful, even in my thirties.

I was just plain ... older.

And a single mother.

I had no formal college education (although my 20 years of experience had landed me the position despite the missing sheepskin).

Oh my God, worse... I lived in a TRAILER. There were low-voiced 'trailer trash' jokes, irritated opinions about 'single mothers', and, later, cruel remarks about 'hot flashes' (I had just had to have a total hysterectomy that Spring, and was back from medical leave as of the month before, August).

The expression "Familiarity breeds contempt" immediately comes to mind.

Struggling to keep my job AND my sanity, I began seeking counseling through the company-offered onsite therapist. Although our 'sessions' helped me find my center, time and time again, all improvements were demolished the next day, via a comment, remark overheard, or hushed conversations. In short, seeking 'help', as my boss had suggested, was only making conditions worse. Now my co-workers were short-tempered about the 'time' I spent away from my desk. They didn't see my situation as being work-related.
But it was nothing BUT work-related...

I had no champion there, at work.
No one else identified with me: no one got phone calls from school informing them their child had just been taken to emergency after a fall in the playground, no one woke up in the middle of the night to their child suffering a high fever, no one agonized over how to make a choice between their child's school supplies or that month's gas bill -- or, worse, had a babysitter or day care provider abandon them in the middle of the busiest work week in months...
No one else there suffered under the huge financial weight of high priced 'family' health insurance, or the confusing task of choosing the 'right' income tax deduction...
No one else there smoked, and although my three or four small three minute breaks upstairs and outside were considerably less then their two longer ten and fifteen minute breaks (used to pick up doughnuts, shop for a new car, run home to let the dogs out...), mine were seen as exceptionally at fault, and I was subjected to derision and veiled disgust constantly. More shame to be heaped on the 'misfit'. The irony was, the almost tangible hostility I was facing in the workplace had become a source of major stress for me -- and I needed that break, that smoke, more than ever, as a result...

It didn't matter that I arrived to work nearly an hour before everyone else. It didn't matter that I declined the daily lunch invitations that almost always wound up being 1 to 2 hour affairs because I wanted to get something DONE, although I usually accepted twice or so a week. It didn't matter that because I trimmed my lunch break down to 30 minutes I was able to have an eight hour day in by 3:30 PM, and several times a week was putting in 'extra' time when staying on until 4 or 4:30...

It didn't matter that I came back to work as soon as possible after quite possibly one of the most earth-shattering surgeries and convalescence a woman can face, despite the new pain, constraints and medications I had to take to compensate for the sudden 'change of life' I had unwillingly embarked on....
And I certainly discovered that it didn't matter that because I spent less time gabbing and more time working I was able to produce some fine work in record time, regardless of the physical and emotional duress I was under.
My crime was 'not fitting in'.
My sentence?
Well, that opportunity was seized within hours of September 11, 2001...

Nash had been up several times in the night, waking and rushing to the bathroom on his own, and it was his pitiful retching that wakened me. His temperature wasn't extreme, but he was warm, and his head was hurting him so terribly he was crying and vomiting... everywhere.
Finally, he was able to declare he felt better, and I carried him to the living room loveseat, where I tucked him in with a pillow and warm afghan, a large plastic ‘sick’ bowl nearby and ready for ‘just in case’, and sat down on the sofa across from him to keep watch for awhile.

 Only a Mother knows the peace that comes after... when your child finally cools and sleeps in peaceful exhaustion, when the floors and tub and toilet have all been wiped clean, when you can take a deep breath and be more relieved and concerned with your child's gentle (finally) breathing and not the clock on the wall.

I didn't even get back to bed. It was already 5am and I knew Nash would have to stay home from second grade that day. I wasn't sure if he was coming down with something, or that he has suffered a seizure in his sleep, or migraine. Since he was 6 months old, he had been treated for a seizure disorder, although he had been seizure-free for going on a year by now, and his Doctors and I were hopeful he was 'growing out of' his childhood epilepsy. Migraines had begun to make weekly appearances, but his Doctor assured me this was to be expected, what with tapering-off of his meds, and his reaching pre-adolescenc

I made a pot of my coffee, checked on my son, then sat down for a few minutes to contemplate my next move.

I was vaguely ill-at-ease with making the phone calls ahead of me. Calling my son in sick from school was one thing. But calling in to work bothered me terribly. I even called and woke my father, to ask if he would be able to come over and watch my son, but he suggested I call one of my sisters instead. Hanging up the phone, I KNEW that wasn't going to happen... Kathy was married with two small children and a husband to see to, along with her grueling work schedule as a registered nurse with two or three jobs... Maria, I hadn't spoke with lately in weeks, and as she was a diagnosed bi-polar, the chance she would feel up to answering her phone or door -- let alone be up to a day with my son -- was too slim to consider...
So I called work at a little after 7:30 am, right after I had called Nash in sick. Tricia was there, early, and was, as always, sympathetic.
She and I had confided to each other on numerous occasions; she was sensitive and had gone through the corporate gauntlet and clique machines herself, many times.
My boss would be in later, and I asked Tricia to let her know what was going on, to give me a call...

Strangely enough, the coffee was just not keeping me very awake. I sat down on the sofa, turned on the TV, then found myself falling asleep.
Oh well, I thought, when Tracy calls me, I'll hear the phone ring. Just a short nap...

When the phone rang, I sat up blearily, dazed, reached for the phone, certain it was my boss and struggling to shake the cobwebs off, to regain clarity and sharpness for the dialogue ahead of me...
With a sigh, I answered as 'awake sounding' as I was able... "Hello?"

"Turn on your TV..." It was my sister, Kathy. Something was wrong, I could hear it in her voice...
"It's already on," I said in confusion, glancing over to the TV. At first glance, it looked like "Good Morning America" was on, two anchors talking with each other, but I did notice the little 'Breaking News' mast at the bottom of the screen.
"Put in on ABC", Kathy said, urgently, and I picked up the remote, set it back down, puzzled.
"It already IS," I told her, then, as I watched the screen -- and saw a city street, camera looking upward at smoke and flames billowing from... what? New York City? the World Trade Center?

“Oh my God.”
It was all I could say, out loud, into the phone, to the quiet room around me. My first thought was that someone had bombed the building again, like an incident years ago.

I turned the volume up, and tried understanding what was going on, while listening to Kathy's words... I caught 'plane crash', 'pilot error', 'hundreds of people in that plane'...
As I stared, and listened, I found my voice, "I don't think this is a malfunction, or pilot error," I said, dread gripping my heart.
"Are you saying somebody would do such a thing ON PURPOSE?" Kathy's voice was incredulous...
"No -- I don't know..." I mumbled, "But something's really wrong..."

JUST THEN, Right Before Our Eyes -- from where she sat in her living room in a farm house near Heyworth and I in my living room in a  trailer in Bloomington, tethered to each other by our phone lines and each of us held captive by our televisions -- we watched in stunned disbelief and horror as a second plane was seen emerging in the background sky, too close to the smoking building and its untouched twin to be normal or safe... and it arced low and slammed into the second skyscraper.

I think at that moment, in America, God must surely have heard the collective gasp of millions of his children...

"Mommy, what are you watching?" came a sleepy voice from across the room, and I told my sister I'd call her back.
"What is Nash doing home?" Kathy asked in surprise, "Don't let him see this..."
I hung up, and went to Nash, but it was too late. He needed SOME kind of explanation, as he knew, by now, that what was happening on screen was the NEWS, not a movie.
Only I didn't know what to tell him. The hardest thing I've ever had to do was at that moment: struggle to compose myself, to be the calm and reassuring parent -- when inside I was screaming in terror and petrified from head to toe.

"America Under Attack" flashed the next banner on the screen, and I thought my heart would stop. What's next? I thought wildly, the Chicago Sears Tower? Was this what we were told to watch out for? The beginning of the end of the world as we know it?
I sat beside my son, blocked the TV, and tried to be the calm mother, the protector, "How's your head, little guy? You feeling better this morning? How about some breakfast? I'm staying home with you today, okay? Let's go to your room so you can sleep in a little longer..." Sentences tumbled out of my mouth, while my mind was begging me to turn around, see what was happening NOW.

Nash wriggled out of my grasp and his voice was half awe, half surprise, "Is that New York City, Mom? Why are those buildings on fire? Was anybody in them?" His words, spilling out of his mouth in a rush.
I hugged him and told him something must have blown up ("like a boiler, or something") on one of the floors, and that firemen were going to put it out and everything would be okay ("let's watch something else if you're not sleepy"), but he was a smart child for nine and when they replayed the clip of the second plane crashing, he declared, "Mom! That plane flew into that building on purpose!"

I turned off the TV, despite my son's protestations, and went in to the kitchen to call Kathy back and fix my son some toast and juice.

He turned it back on.

I told him we could watch a movie instead.

"Mom, how are we going to know if something else happens?" Nash told me with the kind of a look usually reserved for parent-to-child, not the other way around. And he turned his attention back to the news, this child who usually refused to watch anything that wasn’t a cartoon, just in time to see footage of people standing in, waving for help from, both the smoking gashes and the windows of the burning towers ("was that someone jumping??").

He was right, even for his age. How could we NOT watch as events unfolded? He was rationalizing, even at his age, that it was wiser to 'keep an eye' on things, rather than turn away and pretend nothing was wrong...

So I was to spend the remainder of the day, and my life, trying to make sense of the tragedy, trying to shield a child who already knew too much...
"We'll be okay" I said, as I wrapped my arms around him; he climbed up into my lap, too leggy and old for this these days, but today, he knew, was an exception, "We're way out here in the middle of the country, " I told him in my best level-headed and logical voice, "There's no big city or buildings around us here that any bad people would want to bother with. We're safe, honey..."

How much reassurance is there in that, when in the next minutes and hours there would be 'breaking news' that got worse and worse: "Fire at the White House". "Pentagon in Flames". Several more missing airplanes that weren't responding... Now a plane was heading for...Chicago? The White House? People in the streets of New York City, not mere freeze frames but whole nightmarish SCENES of terror, running, screaming, business suits and fashionable dresses caked in white powder, blood, burns, and, above everything, the regular replay of the second plane as it dove for the second Tower.

And then, before a nations' eyes -- the first Tower fell in a giant sigh of great clouds of white smoke and black plumes... How many people had still been trying to make it down those stairs when the building gave up on them? How many others -- in the street below -- had thought they were safe, once outside the front doors, and had turned to watch, for the first time, the surreal damage and smoke above them, only to discover, too late, that they should have kept running, not stopped, they were never safe... as the building collapsed mightily on their heads?

I mourned, as did many other witnesses, the terrible loss of life. I wasn't there, but I, too, was able to feel the souls of so many being ripped from their mortal -- and utterly fragile – Earthly shells...
It haunts me. To this day.

September 11th, from that point on, was a blur for me...

I remember calling back in to work, this time to ask Tricia if she (or anyone else there that morning) knew what was going on.
She didn't... really. She mentioned she'd heard somebody come in, saying they'd heard something on the radio about terrorists bombing the World Trade Center, and a missing plane or two.
After I told her a little more about what was going on, she sounded fearful, and said she was going to find someone with a radio, or look the news up online.

My sister Kathy and I were back and forth on the phone all day. We were in shock. We shared our grief and sorrow together through the phone line. We both knew we'd never be the same again...
Eventually Nash fell asleep for a few hours through the middle of the day, so he missed a lot of the resulting recaps, speculation and ongoing apprehension.
But it was not 'over'.
In the days and weeks that followed, it would become apparent that it was never going to be over...

Despite the arduous and emotionally exhaustive day that was September 11, that night I began to assess things on a more personal level: my Father had called me and told me to fill my car's gas tank up, as prices were spiraling up and out of control (I did, and it cost me $4.38 per gallon that afternoon).
I had called two friends who worked and lived in NYC (one worked just a block and across the street from the Towers) to make sure they were okay, without success, and I was growing worried.
I took stock of our kitchen food stores and picked up gallons of water, bread, peanut butter and extra cigarettes while at the gas station... who knew what might happen next, but we would be prepared in the event we lost power or water here.
I suddenly became acutely aware of every helicopter, ever plane, in the sky overhead that night. Were they terrorists? Was it military? Would the government REALLY warn us in time if they knew disaster lay in wait for specific towns other than NYC?

Sleep was tortuous. I could close my eyes, but the images of the day were burned and scarred into them, my mind's eye in constant, unstoppable replay mode... Would I die in my sleep? Or wake just in time to feel flames burning my trapped body, to feel the unequivocable horror of hearing my son's screams and not being able to reach him?

The following morning, the sun rose. The birds were chirping. Everything here LOOKED the same.
I walked with Nash to the bus stop, reassuring him he'd be okay (but inside, my heart was in my throat -- what if something bad happened today? What if we were separated by some NEXT unfathomable horror -- unable to reunite? I found myself mentally going through a drill in my head: the shortest route to the school, if I had to walk (or crawl), the necessary belongings and food I would need to pack and carry, and what was I to do with our three cats? Leave them? What if I got to the school and Nash was not there? What if the school was simply GONE when I got there... What if he, in fact, had escaped harm but was trying to find ME?

With these unfamiliar thoughts roiling through me, I watched as the bus pulled up, waved to my little boy as he boarded, as it rumbled off. With a deep and shuddering sigh, I turned to cross the street for home, when I spied the blaring headline of the newspaper in the machine right there at the bus stop. It had always seemed like a nice convenience before, having the newspaper machine right there at the bus stop.

This morning it was a scathing intrusion, and big bold five inch type lashed out at me, "A T T A C K" .
The picture was the whole page... the first-hit burning tower next to the second as it collapsed in gigantic mushroom clouds of grey and white dust, ash and smoke...

It felt like the end of the world was about to happen, and I didn't want to spend any 'last' hours or days at work, or away from my son... but I had to.

How many of us were driving that morning, tuned in to the radio and finding NOTHING on but NEWS and MORE NEWS, stopping like automatons at traffic lights, using our turn signals and waiting our turns as we numbly drove to work?

The one thing that kept me going, at that moment, was knowing that I would get to my desk, be with familiar faces and that, for a day, we would not only put down our differences but grow closer as we undoubtedly would discuss the terrible events of the past 24 hours with each other...

My 'personal' September 11th, however, was to happen on September 12th.

(to be continued, Part Two)

Author's Note

I suffer from what the docs call PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This was diagnosed, quite literally in an Emergency Room after I had been brought in with anaphylactic shock, just days after the Day. I was not There. But I witnessed, from the first moments after the first plane hit, a Day, a Terrible Day, of events that stretched out into the Terrible Weeks afterwards, for the Nation, for Me in my corner of the country. I no longer dream of a bright future for myself, my career. It all seemed to stop mattering. As a result, I tremble at every distant 'boom', start at any sudden movement in a crowd, feel my heart go into my throat when I see what looks to be an Arab or Middle Eastern person walk by (convinced that THEY are here, in our towns, even now, awaiting orders to destroy us all). So sad, so wrong, I know. But it is a sickness, remember. And one didn't have to BE THERE, that day, to be struck with it. Those of us struggling to live our daily lives with this crippling condition are many. It's just not something a lot of people wish to discuss... yet.

Reviews

[C Lee]

First of all, let me say i loved this. The shear humility, honest and sincere nature that in our small parts of the world and in our self indulgent lives, we see how insignificant we are in the grander scheme. i loved that you had the courage to put those honest emotions out there about your day and personal life, and melt it into such a tragic day. i too felt the personal moments of being a mother, of problems at work and at home, and then lived thru that day in my seemingly dulldrum day. this is a great write and i am onto the other parts.

[Angelheaded Hipster]

I remember Sept 11th....I was half asleep, and my friend Jeff was pounding like the cops on my bedroom door. It was ironic, cause hours before we had watched the movie Red Dawn. I dont even know why we picked that particular one that night, but we did.
He was yelling something about the Russians, and Red Dawn....
I sat down with him on the couch, and watched. And then I told him that this was an excellent movie, awesome effects.
Then he slapped me awake. It was real. All too real. I live miles from NYC, but I still felt the shock, the horror....I called out of work, and sat in front of the TV the entire day, with endless tears streaming.
I dont think I will ever forget that day. I dont want to forget. Cause youre right. It could easily happen all over again.
One hell of a read, friend. Im looking forward to part two of this.