We were all in our lab at the University of Cinncinnatti Tuesday morning with the radio tuned to National Public Radio, but not really listening. I don't remember if someone came in and said to turn it up or if I heard the words "plane crashed into the World Trade Center" first. I just remember that I was stunned that such an accident could happen.

Of course, just as I was getting a grasp on how big this was (and this was before it was clear that it was a large passenger jet), there was talk of a second plane. And then an evacuation at the Pentagon. And a plane crash in Pennsylvania.

We really only had radio to go on, so I think things were a little more vague. They were definitely easier to deny.

I knew no one in my family belonged in New York that day, but I called home anyway. I called home to my mother crying and telling me that a friend of the family was inside and no one had heard from him yet. I think that was the first time I felt helpless.

The rest of the day is a blur. I think I tried to work, but my advisor wasn't expecting much. 

I still hadn't seen anything other than one still photo by the time the second tower fell. I spent the rest of the day picturing the New York skyline and trying to erase those two towers that had stood over so many trips of my childhood. I couldn't do it.

I don't think the impact here in Cincinnati is the same. People are afraid. People know something big has happened. But a lot ofpeople here have never seen New York. They don't even have a grasp on what the World Trade Center really is. They can't quite figure out why I don't want to be alone and why I don't even know where to begin checking to learn if people are all okay.

I avoided television until I was out on Wednesday night and it became inevitable. There was a TV in my line of sight and it was the first time I really saw the wreckage. It was the first time I saw New York looking like a war zone. I stared for a long time. That made everything real.

Here in Ohio, it's easy to pretend that nothing ever happened. We don't have that anti-monument, that something missing, to remind us that the world will never be the same.

©2001 by Lyndsay Morgan Schaeffer. All Rights Reserved.