Present effecting the Past
On September 11^th, I was not at home; it is very difficult not knowing about my family.  No phone lines were going into this NY area from LI, NYC, and towns that are about an hour north. 

During the first five hours, I could only reach my Sister who is 3 hours north in MA.  Her son was in Manhattan for the rained out game at Shea Stadium the night before.  While on the phone with my sister about noon, she received a call and we found out he was all right and did get home late that day -- safe and sound.

My Brother-in-Law was heading to WTC to take the Path train to NJ as his client is Morgan Stanley--the company that occupier the most of the WTC floors.  He is now working to help house the people who use to work in the WTC. 

Healing memories
When I was in school in the 1950's, we had exercises for air attacks and would dive/hide under our desks or go into a dark hall and hug the walls.  It was always understood, my understanding, that Russia would press five buttons to bomb five of our largest cities -- NYC being one of them.  I did not know I lived 20 miles from midtown.  What I did know was that we lived and when to school in the target zone.

During these years when we were Girl Scouts, we adopted our 'other' song of Over There and NOW, it is not over there...it is over HERE.

Since the Twin Towers were towers, I traveled those streets, took workshops in these offices, eat in the restaurants including Windows on the Worlds, shopped in the stores, and road the subways.  Also, I was in the very same area of Manhattan when the '65 blackout happened.

In 1965, when we all ran into the streets to see what was happening, I found myself with the Jesuit who was teaching my scripture class at Fordham.  He put me in a car with a few Jesuit Students who were going by Penn Station.  During the ride to the LIRR within the first half hour, the reporter on the radio said that we were being attack by a foreign source on the entire Eastern Coast – of course later it was proven not to be true. 

Only, in hearing the first reports, it seemed to me to be what has just happened in NYC in 2001.  It seems to me now, given it was not an outside attack against America, I lived with this fact and never faced the emotions that were real to me before knowing what had happened.  I have held these feelings all these years.

When the first Swiss Air was hijacked in 1970, I was in Europe.  When we went into the Swiss Airport, we were body searched including the removal of my hat as my head had to be searched.  This was behind closed curtains.  I cannot even begin to put into mere words what this experience was like.

When we reached Heathrow, there were airplanes going somewhere that the people were being body searched right in public as they were on line to board the plane.

There were NO security systems at the time.  In fact, my other Brother-in-Law, worked on the first group of security systems when they were in the test stage at the Airport.

During the troubling times of the Nixon days, I was in London.  Not knowing what was happening in America because the news at the time ended at 10 P.M. and I got back to the hotel at 10:30 P.M.  In the dream that night, I was at Heathrow scramming that I was an American Citizen who begging to get on a plane and leave the country to return to the USA.

All this pain was not handled at the time and now is being relived.  I know it all in my mind -- all the details are so clear – and only, now am I experiencing the feelings....