My husband worked in a building one block east and one block south of the WTC, but his office was on the far side of the building, facing east; he could not see the WTC from his window.
We lived in NYC, but in Queens, pretty far from Manhattan. I was at home that day.
My husband called me not long after the first plane hit, but he did not know at that point what had happened. He just saw all this paper flying past his window, and wanted me to turn on the tv to see what I could find out. (I don’t remember for sure, but I think he was having trouble connecting to news websites online.) My first thought was that it was a ticker-tape parade in the Canyon of Heroes, but my husband said no, the paper was too big – entire file folders, not confetti.
So I turned on the tv and saw the reports about a plane hitting the first building. Like so many other people, I assumed it was a small plane – I thought maybe a pilot had had a heart attack. I reported that to my husband, and got off the phone. I can’t even remember now whether I saw the second plane hit, on tv or online. I think not, although I just can’t remember. But I clearly found out about it at some point, and by then it was clear that this was not an accident.
At one point I walked over to my younger child’s school, to see what was happening there, and to make sure he was okay. All the adults at school knew what was happening, but they were keeping it from the kids. I decided to leave my child there; I thought it would be more upsetting for him to be with me, because I would have a hard time hiding how upset I was. While I was at his school, in the administration office, another parent I knew said that one of the towers had fallen. I assumed she meant that the top of it had fallen off; I could not even conceive of the entire building collapsing.
When I got home again, I did see the second tower collapse, live on tv. It was not until that tower collapsed and I realized there was nothing there, that I finally understood that the other tower had completely collapsed as well. (I thought that the reason I could see only one tower before that was just that the second tower was blocking the view of the first tower – not that the first tower was no longer there.)
At that point, I went to school and picked up my kid. It was just my instinct to have him with me.
One of the things that I recall about that morning, before all flights were grounded, was how little everyone knew, and the fear that there was no end in sight – that more and more buildings would be hit, and planes would keep going down.
Another thing I remember about that morning was that it was a piercingly beautiful day, weather-wise. To this day, when I go outside and realize that it is an absolutely beautiful day, my first thought is invariably that it reminds me of 9/11, even after all this time.