and otherwise unnecessary blather

This photo was taken in September 2001.  Our morning started in the usual fashion, with me resisting waking up and the kids watching Barney on TV.  I lounged on the couch and contemplated any semblance of productivity in the day ahead.  I got a call from Cindy Zielke (a woman in my ward) telling me to turn on the TV.  The kids protested my changing the channel with incessant whining, but soon wandered/crawled around carte blanche while I tried to internalize the chaos I saw on almost every channel.  Like every other person in the world I couldn't stop watching. 

Trying to make any sense of the insanity, I called my brother John who worked in San Francisco for United Airlines and he told me that there were still other United Airlines planes yet unaccounted for.  

Then the plane hit the Pentagon.  How could anything breech the very symbol of the entire United States Military?  I was terrified and called my mom crying.   "Mom, they got the Pentagon!"  This confirmed that no target was off-limits, and I was consumed with panic.  We lived 15 minutes away from Fort Hood, TX, the biggest army base in the United States--what would preclude them from targeting that, too?  We went outside and I paced around on the phone in the parking lot while the kids played in the grass and my mom calmed me down and we talked for a long time.  Any real sense of security I felt before had been shattered.

Marc had just started an internal medicine rotation.  I paged him and he was finally able to call me back.  I begged him to come home to the kids and I.  He really didn't even have details of what was going on, since obviously people kept continuing to need medical care even though the country was falling apart.  No sitting in front of the TVs for these interns.  He said there was no way he could come home but would call me back soon. 

After a complete over-saturation of TV coverage, I remember finding solace in subsequent episodes of Barney, Bob the Builder, and Dora that day, holding my two babies close and praying for the people whose lives had changed forever, including ours.