September 11, 2001:

It's funny to think what it was like two years ago. I was asleep, actually, until a couple of minutes after nine. My mother didn't wake me up until after the second plane hit, until it was no longer possible that it was all some horrible accident, some naviagational mistake, until we could no longer pretend that everyone liked us.

She said, "you won't be flying anywhere today" since I was supposed to fly up to Chicago for O-Aide training about 5 that afternoon. I didn't understand what she was saying, so I got up and went downstairs and turned on CNN. I didn't turn the TV off for almost 8 hours.

When I couldn't take CNN anymore, I flipped through all the other channels. There were about four newsbroadcasts on, and several channels were showing a screen with a flag and a message. I settled on Spanish news for a while. Then flipped back to Fox News, CNN, I couldn't stay still. I got up and went online; my mother had left for errands. I was online when the first tower fell, but the TV was still on and I heard it from the other room. I didn't believe the plane had hit the Pentagon for a long time, I thought it was just the fear and confusion that turned something like a fuse blowing into a terrorist attack.

Most of all, I remember the fear. So many people I knew were flying that day and I didn't know where anyone was. At the beginning, we didn't know where the planes had been going and what flight they were. I didn't know if one of my friends had been flying, had crashed into a fireball in DC, or New York, or Pennsylvania. I didn't know if one of my friends was at the WTC; I knew a couple of people who had worked there that summer. A friend actually was there, but he was on the 35th floor of the South tower and he made it out. My response to the events would have been totally different if they had happened two weeks later, when everyone was accounted for safe in Chicago or Boston or Athens. Then, I would have been sad first, I wouldn't have felt the mind-numbing fear.

We drove up, on Thursday and Friday, through a forest of flags and hearing things on the radio I never believed I would hear. I was in O'Hare on Saturday, Sept. 15, waiting for prospective students who were flying in. We got there at 7:30 am, and the only people near the baggage claim besides us were two cops. When we left about 10, we had seen one prospective student and I think we scared her with our enthusiasm. It was so empty. I'm used to busy airports and seeing that empty baggage claim made me cry all over again.

Today we remember our dead. Today, and every day, but most visibly today.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem sempiternam.
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternam:
quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine;
et lux perpetua luceat eis.