Shock reaches into the heartland

September 11, 2001|By Cate Plys. Cate Plys is a Chicago-based journalist.

My first reaction was an instant drive to contact my family. First my husband. I must have said "Oh, my God" at least 10 times as we talked on the phone, my eyes locked on the TV as scenes played and replayed of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center.

Next my brother, to check on my sister-in-law working in the Sears Tower, my niece at day care in the Dirksen Federal Building. Incredible relief to hear that she'd already left work, picked up the baby and started for home.

It bothered me that I couldn't get hold of my parents on vacation in Canada, though they're probably better off there, anyway. Because somehow home still feels like the safe place to be, even on a day when we've learned, with astounding finality, that no place is safe. I watched CNN and thought about going back to school for the kids, just starting their second day of classes.

That would have been absolutely pointless. But I felt as if there'd been a school shooting. I had to keep reminding myself that they'd be quietly and happily in class, not running and shrieking from the front doors.

No, they'd be just where I left them before it all happened, when I was driving home planning to run before getting down to work. And I would have, had I not decided in a fit of responsibility to turn off a Beatles tape and hear some news from National Public Radio. It's funny how, when you tune into the middle of something big, you have no idea what's happened, but the tone of the newscaster immediately sends a shock to your stomach. I don't think I've ever heard Bob Edwards sound like that. I hope I never hear it again.

As it was, after sitting close to the TV for some time--sitting close to it, on the floor, felt necessary--I went out running anyway. Not because I really wanted to exercise, but because I had to get out to the lakefront, look north, and see the skyline with no surging black clouds of smoke around Sears Tower or the John Hancock.

When I rounded the Point at 55th Street and saw the familiar, beautiful panorama, I found I didn't feel much better about it. Instead, I kept picturing the people who happened to see the planes fly into the World Trade Center, then imagining myself watching the same thing happen to Sears Tower as I listened to waves lapping and noted the lake's precise shade of blue.

Why not? Nothing seems impossible now. On a second lap around the Point, I was briefly distressed to see the Hancock's antennas had disappeared, before I realized they were only inside a cloud.

I remember when a public housing highrise was demolished with explosives a few years ago not far north of us. At the last minute I decided to watch from a pedestrian bridge over South Lake Shore Drive. I joined a small group of onlookers, and we waited until the building folded in on itself and a huge black wave of debris moved out across the drive toward the lake, obscuring the skyline. I'd expected to enjoy the spectacle. Instead the bottom fell out of my stomach.

That was for a building that was supposed to come down, a hopeful step toward rebuilding the community. How can the accidental onlookers at the World Trade Center feel?

The scariest part about this new crisis is that I realize how humdrum the idea of the previous World Trade Center bombing had become to me and, I suspect, many others. The first bombing shocked us, but the shock and the memory faded. I didn't seriously worry about terrorist attacks anymore, and just the idea that a gigantic American highrise had been bombed by terrorists didn't have much impact on me.

It's hard to decide now which would be worse: to have the shock and memory of this crisis fade too, or for this sick feeling to stay fresh in our minds and the pits of our stomachs.