this is from my friend Kathy and maybe explains why she has a cloud hanging over her head:
We were busy getting ready that morning, for school and daycare. I was packing my daughter's lunch when I got a call from a woman at my company's headquarter's in Philadelphia. "we're just calling everyone and asking them not to go into the office today. There's a lot of tall buildings out there and we don't want you guys to risk it.".
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You mean you don't know?"
"No, what's going on?"
"A couple of planes flew into the Twin Towers."
"Wha?"
"You should turn on the news."
"Okay."
I hung up and turned on the news. The kids and my husband wanted to know why I was turning the TV on when it was time to go to school.
We watched in disbelief. I had a numb kind of nauseated feeling.
"I called my daughter, Rain who lived in San Francisco to make sure she was okay.
She answered right away.
"Rain, are you okay?"
"Yeah, why?" she said sleepily (she was never a morning person).
There's a.. someone flew into a building in New York and they think its some kind of terrorist attack. Can you come home?
"No mom, not now. I'm sure it's okay."
"Okay, I'm calling Rachel.".
I hung up and dialed my other daughter's number, there was no answer.
"you kids are staying home today" I told my daughter Lauren who was twelve at the time.
"No mom, I want to go to school. I just want everything to be normal." she started crying.
"It's worse than I thought, people are jumping out of the buildings." my husband said, his voice more serious than usual.
I watched the TV as little specks which I assumed were bodies and debris fell out of the smoking building. I just wanted to keep my children close, that was my only defense and my only comfort.
Later that day, I took my two little daughters Lauren and Alex 4 to the pet store and bought a gold fish. It was sort of a treat to make up for everything. We named him Rainbow. The woman at the pet store asked me how I was and I automatically replied "Fine, how are you?"
"Not so good".
"I know".
By November of that year, my husband had lost his job at a consulting company in San Francisco and by February, we were divorced. My own company made cutbacks as the board saw fit. But they survived and I held onto my job for two more years after that. But things were pretty bleak and I spiralled into a depression, that I don't think I've recovered from yet.