Osama / Obama

It was early, and I was still asleep. My mother, who lived with me at the time, knocked on my bedroom door and said, "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!" My feet hit the floor and I ran down the hall after her to see the television. They were replaying the footage, which of course did not include the actual impact since cameras weren't aimed at the top of the World Trade Center on an average Tuesday morning.

My mother left the room to get dressed. I was staring at the television when the second plane crashed into the second tower. I froze in place, then yelled, "Another plane just hit the other tower!" Mother hurried into the room, exclaiming "You're kidding!" as her eyes fastened on the television. Neither of us sat down. We weren't even near the TV, as if distance from that machine could make it all untrue.

Up to that moment, I had a picture in my head of the small private plane that hit the Empire State Building back in 1945. Before my time, but not before my mother's. I imagine, though I never asked, that she was reminded of that event, as well. Then the new thought slammed into me, and I looked at her in horror. I said, "You don't think those were passenger planes, do you?" and our eyes locked for a brief moment.

We stood there for a little while, I don't know how long, watching the coverage. Time was standing still. Then she left the room again to finish dressing. I never moved.

When the news anchor broke in and said a plane had just crashed into the Pentagon, my knees buckled and I grabbed for the counter. My mother, now fully dressed, re-entered the room. I turned my head toward her. Somehow I got the words out. I whispered, "Another plane just hit the Pentagon!"

I'll never forget the look on her face; I can't even find the words to describe it. The noise from the television slowly faded into oblivion and there was dead silence in our house. Then she whispered, "We're under attack!" 

My mother had lived through World War II as one of the many who could do little but watch and wait: Hitler, the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb tests, Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her world included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. It also included the Jonestown mass murders and suicides, the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, Operation Desert Storm, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Waco Branch Davidian siege, and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. And now, just as in 1941, the fight had really come to us.

We finally sat down because we were incapable of standing. The South Tower collapsed. By the time the fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field (instead of, presumably, the U.S. Capitol), shock had numbed us. The North Tower collapsed. We didn't look at each other. We didn't speak.

Finally I ran to my bedroom, threw on some clothes, and drove to work; I was already late. When I entered the quilt shop, I saw a television sitting on the front counter. The owner had brought it from home, and she and the employees were gathered around it. I just joined them. There was nothing we could do.

As I recall, we only had two or three customers that day. Everyone was at home. Watching. Crying. Filled with fear. Soon the enemy had a name: Osama bin Laden. America started sharpening her claws. And so began our War on Terror.

Then late yesterday, we got the word that was so long in coming. Thanks to our American military, Osama bin Laden is dead. The relief in this country is palpable. My mother didn't live to see it.

But I'm a skeptic. I support and believe in our armed forces, but I can't say the same for our current president. Less than a month ago, he officially announced his campaign for re-election. That announcement came on the fourth day of the fourth month for the 44th president. And now, after all these years, we've suddenly found bin Laden and killed him. And immediately buried him at sea.

Like I said, I'm a skeptic.

September 11, 2001: World Trade Center Towers I and II, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I remember you.

"Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?" by Alan Jackson

9/11 Tribute Commercial by Budweiser
"Have You Forgotten?" by Darryl Worley

(Drawing from http://www.dcs-media.com/Archive/remembrance-of-9-11-D2)