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Sept 11

May 28th, 2007

It’s been I don’t know how long since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. For those who don’t know me I grew up in the tri-state area while my father went to school in Brooklyn. New York City was a second home to me with weekend and weekday treks into the city by bus or subway and yearly homages to New York in college. 

Today while watching an episode of Brothers and Sisters I realized how life could have been different for me. I have a plane ticket still unused from US Airways from being bumped on a flight to leave SFO at 11pm on September 12, 2001 to La Guardia Airport.

Where would I be if I had enough vacation time to take two days off? Would I have in been in the midst of the chaos that was NYC and scared my family and loved ones? I don’t know, but that isn’t the point. The point is to realize how we’re each meant for a different path in life and we don’t know what that path is. The morning of September 11th, I decided to take the Caltrain to work. Not only did I decide to take the Caltrain, but I decided to take the earliest one that the work shuttle would pick me up from. I was on the train around 6 am pacific time. Of all the days I decide to take public transportation (once in a blue moon), it was that day.

On the train my mom calls me and says turn on the news, I tell her I can’t I’m on the train. My mom then begins to relay to me what has just happened because my uncle who works in downtown NYC just called her to turn on the news. Shortly thereafter the train conductor says that we will not be stopping at San Francisco airport today and I was one of the few people who knew why. I started explaining what happened to the fellow commuters on the train, but people didn’t believe me because it was so incomprehensible.

That day is still a blur to me. I remember watching from the work window as jet fighters flanked that the international flights as they landed at SFO. I recall an eerie calm as we were eating lunch outside on the patio because no planes were landing or taking off.

That night I started looking things up such as family and friends. I was lucky, all my loved ones were safe despite living and working in the city. My friends in ibanking and on wall street were safe too. Today I recall a trip to New York City in early 2000 where I stayed at the Millenium Hilton and watched the Krispy Kreme in the lobby of Tower 1 or 2 and saw the cleaning staff cleaning up through my hotel room window.

To this day I haven’t walked by the site of the World Trade Center because I’m too scared to. I’ve been back to New York City many times since and I’m glad it didn’t lose it’s sparkle and grunge that makes it special to me.

Everybody has their own experiences and thoughts on what happened that day. Some of our lives were impacted more by the events that unfolded afterwards. For me I missed my yearly trip to New York City that year.

Entry Filed under: Editorial