Entry tags:
one more thing
Something that didn't make it into my 9/11 journal at the time, and I'm still not sure why.
We live about fifteen minutes from LaGuardia airport, and only a little farther from Kennedy airport. There are planes overhead pretty much constantly; if you search the sky, you'll see one, coming in close or soaring farther away.
I remember the first plane I saw in the air after 9/11, after ... two days? three days? of empty skies. It must have been taking off from LaGuardia, and it was flying pretty low, and I heard the roar overhead, and looked up and saw it.
In that moment it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I remember stopping in my tracks and watching it into the distance, fists closed, staring into the eye-watering blue until I couldn't see the plane anymore. Muttering fiercely under my breath: Fly, baby. FLY.
We went to Ohio for OVFF the following month. And, of course, we flew.
First experience with the heavier security. There were uniformed men with guns at the checkpoints; I was randomly pulled to empty my carry-on bag before we boarded the plane. And of course, that wasn't nearly as frightening as the illogical fear that somebody might get through the heightened security and blow up the plane we were on. (Illogical because it was a tiny puddle-jumper of a plane, traveling at 5:30 am, with all of six passengers; hardly a tempting target. But a fear nonetheless.)
But stronger than the unease and the fear was a vehement resolve that nobody and nothing was going to scare me out of the sky.
We live about fifteen minutes from LaGuardia airport, and only a little farther from Kennedy airport. There are planes overhead pretty much constantly; if you search the sky, you'll see one, coming in close or soaring farther away.
I remember the first plane I saw in the air after 9/11, after ... two days? three days? of empty skies. It must have been taking off from LaGuardia, and it was flying pretty low, and I heard the roar overhead, and looked up and saw it.
In that moment it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I remember stopping in my tracks and watching it into the distance, fists closed, staring into the eye-watering blue until I couldn't see the plane anymore. Muttering fiercely under my breath: Fly, baby. FLY.
We went to Ohio for OVFF the following month. And, of course, we flew.
First experience with the heavier security. There were uniformed men with guns at the checkpoints; I was randomly pulled to empty my carry-on bag before we boarded the plane. And of course, that wasn't nearly as frightening as the illogical fear that somebody might get through the heightened security and blow up the plane we were on. (Illogical because it was a tiny puddle-jumper of a plane, traveling at 5:30 am, with all of six passengers; hardly a tempting target. But a fear nonetheless.)
But stronger than the unease and the fear was a vehement resolve that nobody and nothing was going to scare me out of the sky.

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The most annoying part was not being able to go through security without first getting a boarding pass. I'm still not sure why they do that.