Blues Skies
I was in the hospital the day the towers were hit.
My best friend was at my bedside ( as well she should have been!) so that my other best friend, the Rooster, didn't have to take off work to take me home. I had, just the day before, had a "minor" procedure on my heart, which entailed microwaving an errant electrical pathway that was causing my heart to beat at 240 beats a minute for up to 20 minutes at a time. Now, if our alloted time on this earth should happen to be the number of heartbeats, I was burning daylight! Besides making me feel like crap.
We were watching "Good Morning America", when Charlie Gibson announced the show was going to special reports.......the first tower had been hit already, and they began showing the footage. The princess and I turned to each other in bewilderment as to how something like this could have happened. Coming from an aviation family, I could see no good reason weatherwise for this to happen...and with all the backup systems a monster like that must have, how could it have been a mechanical error so vast that the pilot could not have prevented it from crashing RIGHT THERE!!?? It wasn't until we saw the second one hit that we began to realize that it was being done on purpose. And even then, our naive and somewhat arrogant sense of security couldn't wrap our brains around what was going on. It refused to sink in.
When my cardiologist/electrophysiologist walked in, a native of Syria, we asked him if he had heard what was going on. "No, what...." About that time, they were repeating the shot of the second hit, and we told him to watch. He did, and without skipping a beat, he turned to us and said, "We are at war." Just that simple. Just that matter-of-fact. Good doctor that he is, he recognized the symptoms immediately and diagnosed the problem. But, in this case, his doctorate came from life experiences, not formal education. And just in case you are wondering, the "we" he was talking about was the family of people in that room, not the pilots of the planes.
Discharging me from the hospital, he told me to take it easy for x number of days, no driving for x number of days, etc. BUT, the princess and I were already wondering what we should be doing. She's a widow, so anything to be done was on her shoulders, and my Rooster was at work.
She took me home, and the more we talked, the more we worried about getting supplies, cash, gas in the cars, etc, JUST IN CASE. Her daughter was in school "across the big water"in P-colaspeak and she began to feel the pull of needing to be at home. After promising her I would behave, she went home, and I promptly got in my vehicle and filled it up with gas. She and I had already bought groceries. (She lifted the heavy stuff)
At any given time in Pensacola, if you don't hear SOMETHING in the air, you notice. It's like living near the train tracks and not hearing the daily 10am go through, at all. It was eerily quiet. For too long a time. Being a Navy town, we wondered if we would be considered a target, especially since the Navy Aviators start their careers here. The quiet was reminding us that we are not safe. And that we may never again be able to feel safe. That our lives as we had known them had changed. And that, no matter how you might feel about the military and war, it might be coming to our own world. Where we, through that school my MD had attended, would learn to recognize those same symptoms without a second thought. And maybe, our world would no longer be the best place to live, even with all it's faults.
The roars I had no longer consciously heard became something I listened for. My protector from the school bully had been told to "stand down". I was on my own. I hung my flags on my house and my car. And watched TV like somebody with OCD.
I know in my heart that the VERY INSTANT the air was cleared for takeoff, the BLUES fired up and took off, announcing to our portion of the world that they were ready for whatever might come. I went to the yard and watched them fly over, and cried while I felt a sense of pride you cannot imagine, unless you are a Navy Vet. Even Fat Albert was in the air. Waste of money? Sure. But, had I been able, I would have paid that bill out of my own pocket.
My best friend was at my bedside ( as well she should have been!) so that my other best friend, the Rooster, didn't have to take off work to take me home. I had, just the day before, had a "minor" procedure on my heart, which entailed microwaving an errant electrical pathway that was causing my heart to beat at 240 beats a minute for up to 20 minutes at a time. Now, if our alloted time on this earth should happen to be the number of heartbeats, I was burning daylight! Besides making me feel like crap.
We were watching "Good Morning America", when Charlie Gibson announced the show was going to special reports.......the first tower had been hit already, and they began showing the footage. The princess and I turned to each other in bewilderment as to how something like this could have happened. Coming from an aviation family, I could see no good reason weatherwise for this to happen...and with all the backup systems a monster like that must have, how could it have been a mechanical error so vast that the pilot could not have prevented it from crashing RIGHT THERE!!?? It wasn't until we saw the second one hit that we began to realize that it was being done on purpose. And even then, our naive and somewhat arrogant sense of security couldn't wrap our brains around what was going on. It refused to sink in.
When my cardiologist/electrophysiologist walked in, a native of Syria, we asked him if he had heard what was going on. "No, what...." About that time, they were repeating the shot of the second hit, and we told him to watch. He did, and without skipping a beat, he turned to us and said, "We are at war." Just that simple. Just that matter-of-fact. Good doctor that he is, he recognized the symptoms immediately and diagnosed the problem. But, in this case, his doctorate came from life experiences, not formal education. And just in case you are wondering, the "we" he was talking about was the family of people in that room, not the pilots of the planes.
Discharging me from the hospital, he told me to take it easy for x number of days, no driving for x number of days, etc. BUT, the princess and I were already wondering what we should be doing. She's a widow, so anything to be done was on her shoulders, and my Rooster was at work.
She took me home, and the more we talked, the more we worried about getting supplies, cash, gas in the cars, etc, JUST IN CASE. Her daughter was in school "across the big water"in P-colaspeak and she began to feel the pull of needing to be at home. After promising her I would behave, she went home, and I promptly got in my vehicle and filled it up with gas. She and I had already bought groceries. (She lifted the heavy stuff)
At any given time in Pensacola, if you don't hear SOMETHING in the air, you notice. It's like living near the train tracks and not hearing the daily 10am go through, at all. It was eerily quiet. For too long a time. Being a Navy town, we wondered if we would be considered a target, especially since the Navy Aviators start their careers here. The quiet was reminding us that we are not safe. And that we may never again be able to feel safe. That our lives as we had known them had changed. And that, no matter how you might feel about the military and war, it might be coming to our own world. Where we, through that school my MD had attended, would learn to recognize those same symptoms without a second thought. And maybe, our world would no longer be the best place to live, even with all it's faults.
The roars I had no longer consciously heard became something I listened for. My protector from the school bully had been told to "stand down". I was on my own. I hung my flags on my house and my car. And watched TV like somebody with OCD.
I know in my heart that the VERY INSTANT the air was cleared for takeoff, the BLUES fired up and took off, announcing to our portion of the world that they were ready for whatever might come. I went to the yard and watched them fly over, and cried while I felt a sense of pride you cannot imagine, unless you are a Navy Vet. Even Fat Albert was in the air. Waste of money? Sure. But, had I been able, I would have paid that bill out of my own pocket.
posted by Mommanurse at 11:23 AM
1 Comments:
I was in homeroom when it happened. A senior in High School.
Eerie quiet is 4,000 teenagers and teaching staff without a sound other than tiny murmurings of 17 and 18 year old boys wondering if they, like many of their relatives 30 years prior, would be called to fight.
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