On this day of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I specifically remember that morning waking up from a dream of my father, who died the previous year in the week of Thanksgiving. My dream had him walking down a curved staircase we never had in any home I've ever lived, He stopped mid-way down and said to me [We were alone together], "Wake up. There's something happening." It was not yet 6am the morning of the 11th, a Tuesday in our home in CA. The North Tower was already struck 15 minutes earlier, of which I was unaware. My wife was already awake and downstairs in our family room, watching the news on TV. When I came down the stairs, she just said, "Hurry, sit down, We're under attack." Before I could sit down, I watched UA flight 175, from Boston, headed for L.A., where we lived, fly with purpose into the South Tower. Something happening, indeed! I've wished since then Dad hadn't awakened me. Our daughter, a college student, sat on the other end of the sofa where I then sat. She was about to leave for class. She said, "Didn't we go to those towers when I was 6?" Yes. we did. The tops of both buildings were now consumed in thick gray smoke.
We all know what happened.
What I didn't know for another 10 years was that all four of the directly affected flights [two into the Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into the field in PA] were intended to fly to CA; the first three to L.A., the 4th to San Francisco. Both cities I've called home, but I knew no one on any of those flights.
On that morning, my brother and his wife, flying from Amsterdam to NY, was 1 hour out of Amsterdam when their piot announced simply that the air space throughout the U.S. was closed, so the flight was returning to Amsterdam. International flights did not offer regular news programming in-flight until a year or so later, so passengers were left to wonder why our air space was shutdown. My brother and wife were delayed returing home for four or five days.
I was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong on Wednesday, 9/12; that flight was cancelled, and I never did go. By Friday, I was advised that my company was downsizing. Within a month, we went to what we thought was a a temporary two-three week visit with my wife's parents out of state because her father was not doing well. By Thanksgiving week, with my position now severed permanently by the end of October due to severe business reversal with many companies doing business overseas, includiong mine, my fasther-in-law passed away. We immediately decided to put up our house for sale, move in with my wife's mother, who had a 5,000 square-foot home on 13 acres, and in desperate need of assistance.
All that due to 9/11. It changed my life completely.