Oops! Thursday

Early on the morning of 9/11/01, the phone rang. I was living in Tucson, three hours behind the East Coast, and it was about 5:00 a.m. EEFFH and I looked at each other and asked, "who on earth would be calling at this hour." He was awake, sitting in the easy chair, watching some talking heads he had TiVo'd from the night before. I was just waking.

When I answered the phone, PianoLady said, "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. Turn on the television." We quickly hung up and I asked Steve to switch the channel, thinking she meant a Cessna or some similar small plane had made a fatal error.

For the next two hours, we sat, transfixed, staring at the horror that was occurring before our eyes. At various times, I thought of calling Tyler and Jaci. But I was sure they would have turned on the television as soon as they woke, and with a three-week-old baby in the house, surely they'd be awake.

Two hours later, when he was on his way to work, Tyler called me and asked me if I knew what was happening. I told him of PianoLady's call and that we'd seen the whole thing. He and Jaci were completely unaware until he tuned to NPR on the car radio on the way to work.

I have relived my thoughtlessness several thousand times since that day. I'm so sorry I didn't go ahead and call them to ensure they knew what was happening. For every major piece of news since then, I've asked myself if it was important enough to call them.

My instinct was to call. The lesson I learned was to trust my instinct!