I'm trying to decide if I should take September 11, 2002 as a day off, as my way to honour what happened on that day. So many memories flood my mind from that week.

On 9/11/2001, I didn't turn the TV on that morning. Strange for me, since I normally turn it on every morning to check the traffic and weather. Even when I was in my car driving to work, I didn't turn the radio on till I was on the road for five minutes. Why I don't know, and the reasons for my out of the ordinary behaviour that morning still elude me to this day. Maybe I was somehow intuitively picking up the horrible feelings that were already in the air, because by the time I got up the World Trade Centers were already on fire, the Pentagon was in ruins, and the plane in Pennsylvania had already crashed. I don't know.

My first bad memories of 9/11 are therefore, driving in my car and turning on the radio and NPR and listening to the announcers freaking out about what was happening. Part of me thought at first, that I was listening to a clip from a movie or a documentary. Within five minutes, I knew it was real. There is something really strange about listening to a national tragedy like 9/11, while doing something completely mundane like driving to work on the freeway at 70 mph.

When I got to work, a couple of people from work were standing outside my building. My company had closed our office because we were close to the airport, and they were afraid that if anything happened at the airport we would be in danger. There was also a news report saying that all the roads around the airport would be closed, and we didn't know if our office would be affected.

On the way home driving, I remember just feeling very sad and crying. At stoplights, I looked around at other drivers and wondered if they were freaking out as well. In my mind, everyone looked dazed but that might have just been wishful thinking on my part. On the way home, a news report came on saying that the Golden Gate Bridge might be a target, and I thought great. I live five minutes from the Golden Gate bridge, and if they block the roads I might not be able to get home. Then another thought came. What if the bridge gets blown up? How will the bridge gets blown up? If they drop a bomb, what if they miss and my neighborhood gets blown up? What if the terrorists have hijacked another plane, and another struggle ensues and they crash the plane in my neighbourhood instead? I'm only five minutes away, after all. If I have to die, I want to die at home where I'm comfortable. I feel bad, thinking how selfish I was at the same moment a national tragedy was taking place. People were already dead in NYC, DC and Pennsylvania, and all I thought about was wanting to get home as soon as possible so I could die comfortably in my own home.

As I parked the car in my neighbourhood, I saw that the schools were letting the children out. I had heard on the radio that Mayor Willie Brown had closed the public schools. I thought of parents who had to leave work to pick their children up, who had to explain to little ones what was going on and why they had to leave school. My eyes fill with tears at this memory. I was glad to not be a parent, who had to explain 9/11 to a child.

Walking around my neighbourhood was eerie. There was an unnatural silence in the air. I pictured televisions on in every house, and people watching the news in horror. I didn't see anyone on the street, as I walked back to my apartment, which was strange. At that hour of the morning, there would have been quite a few people out on streets. Perhaps my neighbours were too freaked out to leave their homes and apartments. I wondered if they were having the same fears I was. God, we were only five minutes away from the Golden Gate Bridge and they said on the news that the bridge was a target. Were people in their houses praying to whoever they worship, I wondered? Praying for the people who had already died back east, praying that the terrorists had not hijacked another plane, praying for their own safety, and most of all praying for their own peace of mind to face whatever was going to happen that day.

More later.