Too Much Sky

Like every other morning of the world, I slept until the last possible moment. I need to be at school for class by about 8:15, so I give myself about fifteen minutes to get ready and fifteen more to drive in to school. This leaves no time for turning on the radio or the television.
I grab my backpack and rush to my car. Like every other morning in Houston it is sunny, hot and sauna-humid. My shower has been negated by the time I reach the car. I get in, turn on the engine, and get ready to pull out as the radio comes on.
What blares out of my speakers is a woman screaming over and over: "My God! My God! My God!". It is 8:03 am. Slightly shocked at the chaos on the radio I make my way towards the school. The woman won't stop screaming. There are more screams in the background, and a reporter blubbering, not making any sense, something about a plane crash.
At first I think it is here in Houston, and from the sound of it in a heavily populated area. I actually check the horizon for smoke as I scan the stations to get a clearer idea of what was going on. Over the course of the fifteen minute drive, and after cycling non-stop through a dozen radio stations, it becomes clear that it is not here, but in New York City, and there is more than one crash, and it may not be accidental.
Once I get to the school I go straight to the breakroom, where there is a television. Everyone else is there, and no one is speaking. The World Trade Center towers have been hit with planes. Flames engulf the upper floors.
The decision is made to keep on with class. The day's first lecture: "Fires and Explosions in the Operating Room." I stay in class for about ten minutes, then leave for the breakroom. I cannot not watch the television. During the time away another plane crashes into the Pentagon. Another plane on its way to Washington goes down in Pennsylvania. The news says other planes are missing. Maybe other cities are targets.
I watch as the towers go down, still the most surreal and unimaginable sight I have ever witnessed. A classmate is in tears. Her fiance is in New York for business. His client's office is in the towers. It is not until several hours later that she learns that the hotel he normally stays at, the Marriott next to the WTC, had made a mistake and he had to be booked in a hotel far uptown in Times Square. A chronic oversleeper, the extra commute made him late for work. He was about to walk into the tower went the plane struck. He ran for his life, and made it away safely.
Some of my best friends live in NYC. I couldn't think of any reason why they would have been in lower Manhattan that day. Fortunately I was right, though it would be several hours before I knew.
Within the next few minutes we are sent home. The Texas Medical Center has been deemed a potential target, and we are told to evacuate. The barricades go up behind me as I drive off to a friends house where we spend the rest of the day with others just watching the news.

I can still remember most every detail of that day. It caused a mixture of emotions that before then I really never thought I'd feel. It was like the foundations had shifted, that what you took for normal was gone and was never coming back. It was an overwhelming sadness. I was stunned by the capacity for evil, and stunned again by the capacity for compassion in the aftermath. I remember feeling anxious the first time I saw a commercial jet flying low over downtown Houston. I remember being incredibly happy when Fox finally ran a Simpsons rerun instead of continuous news coverage - a bit of normalcy had returned. I remember feeling a dark, extremely un-Christian hatred toward the hijackers, whose misunderstanding of their God would be completely laughable if the results had not been so tragic. I remember a few public prayers for the leaders of Al-Qaida, praying for a change of heart. I remember secretly praying they would have no such change of heart, that their blind hatred would follow them to their graves. Hell was too good for them.

I absolutely love New York. It is by far my favorite city. I lived there a couple of years, just long enough to consider myself a New Yorker. Everytime I'd leave the city, whether by air or by car, the first thing I'd look for on my return were those two towers on the skyline. They were the first signals that I was almost home.
The first time I went back to NYC after 9/11 I instinctively looked at that place in the skyline, and was almost unbearably sad at the emptiness. There was too much sky. I've gone back a few times since then and still haven't quite adjusted to the alteration.
I cannot believe that its been four years since that day. I wish I could say that was the only time I had seen such devastation and loss, but the last couple of weeks have made that untrue. The sadness, helplessness, and anger, all over again. But also the generosity and compassion that such events bring. At the end of the darkness, always a bit of light.