Sorrow That Will Live in Infamy

My spirit is exhausted, my eyes are tired from tears and from keeping up with the T.V. news and Internet news for what seems like every waking moment. We've just experienced "the next Pearl Harbor" and it is beating down our country.

I have to admit, I was naive while watching "Good Morning America" at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning. I gazed confused as the one tower smoked from the unusually spaced caverns in the top of the building. What could have created them? A bomb? A fire? Then there was talk that a plane had hit the North Tower. Diane Sawyer commented that, on her frequent flights back into the city, she often noticed that aircraft did fly unusually close to the buildings.

A moment later, a dark jet entered the screen from the right. I immediately thought, "And there's a plane now! Wow . . . they do fly very close . . . "

An explosion and a fireball in the South Tower, an "Oh my God" from the commentator, several "Oh dear Lord"s from Diane Sawyer. I couldn't believe my eyes-what on earth was going on with these planes? Was something wrong with their instruments? Terrorism just did not cross my mind.

Charles Gibson quickly mentioned that, indeed, it "looks like it is some kind of concerted effort." A terrorist attack-planes as bombs. And at this point, we didn't even know the planes were carrying innocent passengers.

Before 10 a.m., another plane-as-terrorist-weapon would crash into the heart of our nation's military, the Pentagon. Another would end in a pile of steel and dust in a field in Pennsylvania, the hijackers' attempts apparently thwarted by several brave and furious passengers-or, rather, heroes.

One hour, four hijackings, four plane crashes.

My office was sent home from work at 9:45 and encouraged to spend the day "in mourning and prayer for the victims and their families." I kept the news on all day, sadly taking in every bit of info and every new report.

We eventually learned of cell phone calls to loved ones: "We're being hijacked!" We cringed at video of desperate leaps from the windows of the Twin Towers. We hoped against hope the thousands who were "missing" could still possibly be alive.

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