I didn’t use a pillow, or a blanket, or a stuffed animal for my tears. After an hour spent sending e-mails to those in harm’s way (my cell phone, like many others, not working), I collapsed onto my bed at my Cockeysville apartment, tired from a late night and early morning. I own a cat, a beautiful three-year old black and white tabby named, by his previous owners, Guy. I guess he was asleep under the futon when I got in from class, but soon he was padding across the mattress, rubbing his face against my hand, hungry for attention.

I was in my Intro to Theater class that morning at 9:30. The attacks had already begun -- well, pretty much ended by this point -- but I was ignorant of them. A kid a few rows in front of me started speaking with the girl next to him about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I pictured a Cessna. The rest of the class went by without any discussion of the attack, none of us knew except that one kid ... and he very well may only have known about the first flight. Towards the end of the class, another man (I assume a teacher) entered the theater and asked to speak with Mr. Cascella in private. At the time, I assumed he was in trouble. How little I knew.

I have a Folklore and Literature class at 12:30, which meant I had a little less than two hours to kill after my Theater class ended. I headed to the Chesapeake Lounge in the Union, and started reading “The Merchant’s Two Sons” for class that day. It just so happened that some A/V guys were setting up some TVs on the wood floor. It just so happened one of those TVs was on. And it just so happened it was turned to CNN. And they were talking about the plane crash.

Except they were saying “crashes.” Plural.

I fully expected to see the wreckage of a Cessna on the television. But I happened to look just as they were replaying the image of the second plane. A woman screamed, “Jesus Fucking Christ!” and a blurred image suddenly turned into a ball of flame billowing up the Tower. I wasn’t alone: the A/V guys were watching too, and students from the other couches had approached. No one said anything, no one was smiling. Everyone looked shocked, as these two huge towers crashed to the ground.

Five minutes later, my Jeep was pulling out from Towson Center.

I was so tired, so weak from the sudden blows which had threatened friends in Arlington and Manhattan, so weak from the fear I felt, driving home, as MIX 106.5 aired the local affiliates’ TV feed: reports of the U.S. Air Force shooting down passenger jets, of car bombs going off in front of the State Department and across DC. I think I was blind to the world when Guy’s cold nose pressed against me later that day, his purring sounded like a soft earthquake.

I looped my arm around him and pulled him close, but he didn’t fight like cats do when they feel trapped. And burying my face into the soft fur I cried so shamelessly and for so long. I don’t think I can even remember the last time I cried that much, or for that long.

[ September 21, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]

[ September 21, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]