XXXL Fleece I Still Can’t Give Away: Remembering September 11, 2001
Twenty-five years ago today, I was 26 years old, working in the United States near Everett, Washington.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got up early, as I usually did, turned on the news, and began ironing my suit for work. I remember the skirt. It was black.
I had often thought that American morning news had a different tone than the news I was accustomed to watching in Canada, but that morning, shortly before 6:00 a.m. Pacific time, the broadcast suddenly changed.
A plane had hit the World Trade Center.
I stopped ironing and watched.
Then I watched the second plane hit live.
I called my then-husband.
The phone rang. No answer.
I called again. And again.
Finally, he picked up, angry at being woken, yelling, “What?”
I yelled back, “Turn on the news. Now.”
He swore at me, but turned it on. And then his entire tone changed.
At some point, I smelled burning: my black skirt. I had left the iron sitting against it. It wasn't badly burned, but the heat had melted an iridescent patch into the black material along one side. I still have this skirt today.
It is strange what the mind remembers when the world changes.
Not only the planes. Not only the towers.
A black skirt and the smell of overheated fabric.
Much of what happened after that became a blur; other things remain extraordinarily vivid.
The silence
First came the silence.
Traffic seemed to disappear. People were listening to the news everywhere.
Then I noticed the sky.
The Seattle area was normally filled with the background noise of aviation. Sea-Tac, Boeing Field and the aerospace industry meant aircraft were simply part of the soundscape.
Suddenly, there were none. The quiet was eerie.
Then came the fighter jets.
They would roar overhead, in pairs, at what seemed like almost clockwork intervals.
At first, every aircraft sound made my stomach clench. Eventually, I began to recognize the sound of the military patrols, and strangely, that familiar roar became less frightening than hearing an aircraft I could not identify.
I was a Canadian civilian working on a defence project in Washington State. I drove to the office, where several members of our team had gathered.
Our supervisor suggested that there really wasn't anything we could do about what was happening, so perhaps we should concentrate on our project.
We tried.
Mostly, we sat quietly, frightened and distracted.
Several of us were Canadian. Some were from Toronto; I was from Victoria. We began trying to figure out how to get home.
I had travelled to Washington by HeliJet. Now everything was grounded.
The border was effectively inaccessible to us. Everything was closed. Everything.
It would take me four days to get home.
The best and worst of people
Something remarkable happened in the first day.
People came together. American flags appeared everywhere. People stood on overpasses holding signs of support for New York, for Washington, D.C., for the victims, the rescuers and their families.
Strangers talked to one another. People helped one another. The kindness shown to passengers stranded in Gander, NL was an incredible source of pride for being Canadian.
Canada was prepared to help in whatever way needed by the USA.
There was a tenderness in the middle of the fear that I will never forget.
Then another tone began creeping in, and it was dark.
My colleagues and I eventually found a restaurant that was open and went looking for food.
One member of our team was Sikh. He was refused entry. The language directed at him was openly racist. To the people refusing him entry, his turban and brown skin were enough to make him a threat.
I remember being horrified.
He wasn't from the Middle East. He had nothing to do with the attacks. He was Canadian. In fact, his family had been Canadian for four generations.
It didn't matter.
Later, we went to a bank because we needed cash. Credit cards were becoming difficult to use and everything felt increasingly uncertain.
Again, he was denied entry.
He had to hand me his bank card and PIN so that I could go inside and withdraw his own money for him.
That frightened me in a different way.
The attacks themselves were terrifying, but watching how quickly fear could become hatred was terrifying too. How easily a frightened population could look at another human being and decide that they represented the enemy.
Yet, at exactly the same time, other people were displaying extraordinary generosity.
That contradiction has stayed with me for 25 years. Humanity at its best; humanity at its worst. Existing side by side.
Stranded
Hotels filled with stranded passengers.
Flights were cancelled.
Transportation systems were disrupted and rules changed almost by the hour.
I went to the airport despite knowing my flight wasn't leaving because I was told I had to go there to deal with my ticket.
The airport was chaos.
There were security checks everywhere. Emergency restrictions appeared almost instantly.
Objects that no one had thought twice about days earlier were suddenly potential weapons.
I remember my nail clippers becoming a security concern and were confiscated before I reached the customer service desk.
I remember security personnel shouting. Everyone was frightened, including the people responsible for keeping everyone else safe, and that fear seemed to amplify itself through the terminals.
I was desperate to get back to Canada.
One possibility was getting to Blaine and walking across the border, but there was no practical way to get from Sea-Tac to the border.
I was stranded.
My hotel was full and I could not extend my stay.
I eventually found another hotel and another room, but prices were rising and my credit card was approaching its limit.
My then-husband, who initially had been panicked about a potential attack near him, became increasingly concerned about how much money I was spending.
He told me my company should pay for it. I was sure they eventually would, but reimbursement sometime in the future wasn't particularly useful when I was 26 years old, stranded in another country during an unprecedented national emergency and rapidly running out of money.
I was terrified, and I felt very alone.
My heart was with the people in New York and at the Pentagon, and with the families learning that someone they loved was never coming home.
There was a sensation of despair hanging over everything that I had never experienced before.
Before food became difficult to find, I managed to order two pizzas from a two-for-one restaurant. I ate pizza for days. I developed terrible heartburn.
It was a new sensation for me then. Looking back, I suspect the pizza wasn't entirely responsible. My body was carrying the anxiety my mind couldn't process.
My mother got me home
When I began running short of money, my Mom deposited money into my account so I could withdraw cash.
No debate. No lecture. She simply helped me get home.
On the third day, I managed to secure a passenger ticket aboard the Victoria Clipper from downtown Seattle to Victoria. Getting to the Seattle waterfront became its own maze. Taxis, buses, trains and other transportation were disrupted or unavailable.
Then another stranded hotel guest offered to drive me in a rental car. He was trying to find his own way home to Pittsburg. I remember thinking about the distance he still had ahead of him and wondering how difficult his journey would be.
As we drove, he prayed.
When he dropped me off, he told me: “God bless.”
I have never forgotten him.
Leaving Seattle
As I waited to board the vessel, I kept checking the little news updates coming through on my cell phone. The battery was nearly dead.
Everything felt fragile.
Communication.
Transportation.
Money.
Plans.
Certainty.
Eventually, I boarded. When the ship pulled away from the dock and began moving toward Canada, I cried. Seeing Vancouver Island coming into view was overwhelming. I had made it.
Onboard, I went into the gift shop.
Their supplies were limited as they had not restocked, but I bought two fleece hoodies.
One was an XL. The other was XXXL.
They were far too big, but they were warm, they were available, they were clean, unlike the rest of my clothes, and after everything that had happened, I wanted comfort.
When we reached Victoria, my Mom picked me up. My husband did not. He was at home, still obsessively watching the news. I recounted to her what the previous days had been like.
The silence.
The fighter jets.
The fear.
The racism.
The flags.
The strangers helping strangers.
The airport.
The feeling of not knowing whether I could get home.
Then I showed my husband the two fleece hoodies. He scolded me for wasting money on clothing that didn't fit. He still took the XL.
I was left with the XXXL. I was normally a medium.
Twenty-five years later
I still have the Seattle Clipper fleece.
It is old now. It doesn't smell particularly good. It is still enormous on me. There is no practical reason whatsoever to keep it.
It's time to let it go, but I struggle to give it away.
That fleece is connected to something larger than clothing.
When I look at it, I remember being 26 years old and frightened in a country that suddenly felt completely different from the one I had woken up in that morning.
I remember the stranger who drove me to the waterfront while trying to find his own way home.
I remember my mother quietly putting money into my account because her daughter needed help.
I remember people standing on overpasses waving flags.
I remember a Canadian Sikh man being denied food and access to his own bank account because frightened people decided that his skin colour and turban made him dangerous.
I remember how quickly kindness can emerge, and how quickly hatred can, too.
I remember a silent sky.
The roar of fighter jets.
A burned black skirt.
Two terrible pizzas, especially after days in a hotel fridge.
A dying cell-phone battery.
A ferry pulling away from Seattle and finally seeing Victoria ahead.
September 11, 2001 changed the world in ways far greater than anything I experienced personally. Thousands of people went to work that morning and never came home. Families lost parents, children, spouses, siblings and friends. First responders ran toward something almost unimaginable. Others would live for decades with the physical and psychological consequences of what happened that day.
My experience sits at the distant edge of that enormous tragedy, but it changed me.
Perhaps one of the things I carried home with me was an understanding of just how thin the layer of normality around our lives can be, and how, when it is suddenly stripped away, people make choices.
Some choose fear.
Some choose hatred.
Some look at another human being and decide they do not belong.
Some offer a stranger a ride.
Some pray with someone they have just met.
Some put money into their daughter's bank account.
Some stand on bridges holding signs because they desperately want grieving people thousands of kilometres away to know they are not alone.
Twenty-five years later, I think that is what I remember most: not simply that humanity revealed its worst that day - it revealed its best as well.
Maybe that is why I still have that ridiculous XXXL fleece.
It reminds me of the four days when I saw both, and it reminds me which one I want to choose.
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