The Last Innocent Day: September 10, 2001

Everyone remembers THE 9/11. If you were living that day and old enough to retain memories, you know what you were doing at every life-altering moment of that day.

8:46 a.m. — American Airlines Flight 11 hits the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

A few minutes later, the breaking news is announced on the radio station I listened to while getting ready for work. I race to my living room and turn on the TV.

What a horrible accident! A plane has flown into one of the Twin Towers in New York City.

I sit on the edge of our hunter-green armchair watching the images on the screen. How could that happen? Newscasters on every station ask the same question. All eyes glued to the tragedy, we see in real time a second plane slam into the South Tower.

9:03 a.m. — United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower.

That explosion shakes not only the South Tower but the soul of every American. One plane could be a freak accident. Two? That was intentional.

Who? Why?

The flames burn away our feelings of security as we watch the buildings burn.

These horrors happen in countries far away, not here. We watch these atrocities happen to other people thousands of miles away and pity and pray for them, but this doesn't happen to us!

This is America! We are invulnerable! No one would dare—could dare—come onto our soil, with malice and intent, and take the lives of innocent Americans!

I sit rigidly staring at the television, gripping the remote like a lifeline, my last breath before the explosion caught in my chest.

The oddest image comes to mind.

Bath towels hanging on a line, blowing in a gentle breeze beneath the bluest sky I'd ever seen.

That had been my September 10th.

We'd just moved back to Wilmington, North Carolina, from Georgia a month before.

Monday was my day off, and I'd finished the last of the unpacking. The load of towels I washed hung on the clothesline in my backyard.

As I walked by my kitchen window, the towels caught my eye. They were moving so gently in the finest breeze.

Just a simple image.

The colorful towels. The green of the pine trees across the back of our yard. The blue storage building in the corner of the lot. And the bluest Carolina sky I've ever seen. So clear it felt as if you could see all the way to heaven.

Birdsong filled the air.

I remember standing on my patio and closing my eyes with my face turned up to the sun, not just seeing, but feeling, how blessed.

My beautiful son was at school. My husband was at work. I had the windows open to a cool September day as I feathered our new nest.

A feeling of peace, where all is right with the world.

Now, less than twenty-four hours later, I sit in disbelief and terror, that sense of "rightness" stripped away, leaving raw, naked fear.

Tears pour down my face as, with shaking hands, I dial my husband's work number.

"Someone flew planes into the World Trade Center towers!"

While desperately trying to understand what has just happened in New York, we are told another plane has crashed into the Pentagon.

Dear God, this can't really be happening.

I have to go to work.

I was working the lunch shift at Ruby Tuesday and had to be there at 10:00.

We live near the airport, and as I drive across the College Road overpass at Market Street, I see planes lined up in the sky to land at the airport.

All planes were grounded. All flights ordered to land at the nearest airport.

What does this mean? How can that even logistically be achieved?

While I'm crossing the overpass, the unbelievable happens on an island in New York.

One of the Twin Towers falls.

The 110-story South Tower falls to its knees.

With God's help, I made it the rest of the way to the restaurant, blinded by tears and sobbing. I rush inside, to the others who feel the same terror and disbelief.

There is comfort in that human contact.

Standing in the bar area, watching the televisions, we try to comprehend the incomprehensible.

People throw themselves from the inferno to certain death below. The Pentagon's outer ring collapses.

How is this happening?

Who could do this to us?

THIS?!

10:28 a.m.

With the rest of the world, a handful of us stand huddled together in a Ruby Tuesday bar, watching in disbelief as the North Tower falls beside its brother.

A fellow employee—I wish I could remember his name, but I will never forget his face—puts his arms around me and another girl named Amy. The three of us hold on to each other and cry as the world literally comes crashing down.

Our manager, through her tears, says we need to prepare for lunch. As a restaurant with televisions, we will likely have a busy day as others come on their breaks, searching for somewhere to try to figure out what is going on.

I remember standing at a stainless-steel counter cutting up lemons for tea and asking how we could do something like cut up lemons at a time like this.

Someone—I don't know who; it may have just been God whispering in my ear—said:

"It is BECAUSE of this we need to keep doing what we do, no matter how small the task."

It was a surreal day.

We were packed to capacity.

When President Bush came on to address the nation at 1:00 p.m., no one spoke. The kitchen staff filtered out into the dining area.

In those moments, as the President spoke, the divisions that usually separated us seemed to disappear. In that restaurant, and in so many places across the country, people reached for one another simply as Americans.

We drew strength from each other. We gave hope to each other.

We came together as one family, determined to stand up out of the ashes and show the world that we would not be broken. We would not back down. We would not go quietly without a fight.

I only worked at the restaurant a couple more months before I went back to office work. But I am grateful that was where God had me on 9/11 and during the weeks that followed, because I got to see the human spirit at its finest in every single person who sat at my tables.

I hugged more complete strangers—

No, that's not true.

For those few weeks after 9/11, we were not strangers.

We were family.

We were friends.

Each year, when 9/11 comes around and we remember, I remember also September 10, 2001, and my line of bath towels.

I can see and feel that day as vividly as the next.

It was the last innocent day.