9/11.... I was there.

Every year around this time, its common to see the question asked, 'Where were you on Sept. 11?

Where was I?

I was there.

You don't get that answer very often do you?

Ok, I wasn't any where near the Twin Towers or even in New York at all. But I was in Washington D.C.
Right in front of the main lawn of the Capitol building. My husband, my then 3 year old daughter, myself, and my in-laws from North Carolina were all on vacation together.

I had never been to DC and my first impression upon leaving the hotel that morning, getting on the underground rail system and coming back above ground near the Capitol building was probably as typical as that of any other tourists. The architecture was incredible. Absolutely stunning really. The sidewalks seemed crowded and happily buzzing. We were all trying to see and take in everything at once. Everything seemed big... like on a much grander scale than the rest of the country. It seemed fitting for the capitol of our great nation, such a powerful city.

As important as it was to take everything in, it was my mission to be sure to capture it on video too. This was our very first family vacation after all. And I felt pretty fancy to own a JVC palm corder that used those itty bitty cassette tape cartridges. This was indeed going to be a great memory!

With my eye glued to the playback screen I panned the area from right to left... from left to right. In the middle of the span was the Washington Monument across the street. I panned slowly all the way from the bottom to the top so we could all appreciate the full impact of it later on.

While I was looking up I noticed a plume of smoke hovering above a ridge of trees on the right side of the horizon. It was black smoke, not the white stuff I'm more used to seeing. In my mind, black smoke means something is burning that is not meant to burn. With my camera still aimed at it, I pointed it out to the others and asked them what they thought it was.

'Probably just a forest fire across the river or something.' Everything about the answer said, 'Don't be silly and worry about some smoke... there are much better things to record and see!'  And so I did.

As we stood there on the sidewalk deciding which direction to go first and what sight to see when, the people on the sidewalks seemed to get more numerous and most were heading in one direction, a few dashing off in the other. They didn't really look like tourists. They looked like scowly people who were maybe on lunch from their high pressure DC jobs. Though it couldn't have been much later than 10 in the morning, I supposed DC gets an earlier start on their day. And when you don't know any better, you simply make sense of it the best you can and put it away in your mind.

I seen a police car pull over on a side street next to the Capitol building lawn and just kind of sit there parked. Must be normal protocol for security in these parts I thought. Another look back a few minutes later I noticed that it seemed like the entire Capitol lawn area was sectioned off with yellow caution tape and there were more police cars. There were officers that appeared to be explaining to people that they could not enter the area or be on the lawn at all. I figured there must be some kind of event about to take place. Again... putting it out of my mind. I couldn't expect to understand much of the ways and whys of how things worked in this big fancy important city.

My mother and father in law were trying to get a hold of my sister in law who lived and worked in DC. She was to meet up with us that morning but when and where was yet to be determined. As we stood there waiting for some kind of plan, someone on the street had said something to my in-laws about a plane hitting the Empire State building in NY.  Obviously that was misinformation, but if you've ever played 'The Rumor Game', you know how that happens.

It was kind of surreal the way all the information came onto the streets so slowly. I suppose if you bothered to stop a passerby and ask them, 'Why does it seem like so many of you are headed in the same direction at 10 am.?', you'd get the explanation that everyone was trying to make it to the subway to get home to call and check on loved ones, and because they were simply sent home from their jobs for the day due to the great tragedy that had taken place in New York and right there across the river at the Pentagon building. But it was such a weird moment in time... I don't think very many people really believed it if they had heard it and thus weren't exactly reacting outwardly at the time.

Word began to spread that more than one plane had in fact hit the Towers and that another had hit the Pentagon. Thus the smoke above the ridge of trees across the way.  The general feeling was that this conclusively meant it was no accident and that something was terribly amiss. We then found out that the very spot we were standing was possibly the next target. Thus the 'stay back away from the Capitol building and lawn area.' goings on.

Next came the information that the subways were running on an extremely limited basis, and eventually not at all. It was a good thing our hotel was centrally located in the city and wouldn't be too far of a walk back, but we still had to meet up with my husbands sister.

Finally we did, and then we all headed back to the hotel and hoped to catch some news. Little did any of us know what exactly was in store for us and the rest of the world for the next 48 hours on TV. And once back at the hotel, that's all we did for the next five hours... just sit in there and shake our heads trying to comprehend. We ordered room service that night instead of going out, and eventually decided we had to get out of the hotel room for a walk or something. So we ended up spending a lot of time at the hotel pool trying to make the best of what was our first family vacation.

The next day we made a few phone calls as to what sites were still open to the public and were able to still visit some great places. We hoofed it to the Washington Zoo and a few of the big museums. All with little to no crowds. It was kind of nice in an awkward kind of way. Our biggest concern though was how my husband and I were getting home.

Since we had flown out from Oregon, and met them at their home in North Carolina, we still had to ride back to NC  and catch a flight home. Aside from the fact that it was being predicted that there would be no commercial air travel for up to a week or more, there was no way my husband was going to get on a plane right at that time anyways. He checked prices for trains, buses, everything he could think of. Eventually he got over it and in a number of days planes were cleared to fly again and we made it home safely.

Getting back home after that was like having been in a third dimension. It seemed too far away and in some kind of parallel universe to still be part of our current truth. We were part of that world that day and although it touched every one's lives everywhere I still tend to want to think of it as an event that took place in a specific place and the people in my little world back home can only look at it from the outside and know it from that perspective. Me included. Nothing major ever happens in our lives. We are just country folk in a small town on the west coast. But we were there... that day, that moment. We lived in the aftermath and life went on. We vacationed. We enjoyed each other's company. We made memories. And yet sometimes I actually forget. I forget what it felt like to realize how easily the next target could have been the very building you were lingering in front of... to realize that a plane full of passengers died in Pennsylvania instead.   I forget trying hard to wrap my brain around the enormity of the situation that would cause hundreds of people to jump from sky scraper windows. I've not yet- and no matter what news casts I seen then, and now... I can not put myself in their shoes and imagine what it was like.

Yes, I was there. Right in the middle of it for all intents and purposes. Yet I never saw the tragedy unfold before my eyes in person. Some things are just too unreal to be real and unless it happened TO you, you will always be a bystander on the outside looking in. Washington, D.C. was a very composed city that day. It's hard for me to say, yes I was there, with out feeling like a bit of a story teller. Because I know saying that would mean to every one else that I am familiar with the tragedy on a first hand basis. But I don't think it was until everyone got home and sat in front of their t.v, or talked on the phone with loved ones who were in fact the ones running down the street avoiding falling buildings (and people) and ash clouds, that the real depth of the tragedy could even have begun to sink in.

Yeah, I was there. But was I?