My day started so normally yesterday. I lay in bed, late for work, and then heard the first confused reports on the news radio. I had been trying to get a weather report.
As many of you know, I recently moved from Chicago to Philadelphia, and most of my family is here on the east coast, in my parents are in New York, and my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew are in Boston. I had spoken to my brother over the weekend. I was in New York for all of last week and was planning on going back Tuesday, for rehearsals, as well as for my Dad's 60th birthday. Eric then called Monday to say he couldn't make it, because he had to fly to LA for business Tuesday. When I heard the news reports yesterday, I panicked - my brother was flying from Boston to LA. Thankfully, an hour later I found out that he was safe. He had been on his way, when the plane turned around. The passengers didn't know what was happening, but out the window, they could see New York burning. He said everyone just went silent. When he got back to Boston and off the plane, he had 18 messages on his cell phone. When I talked to him, he still didn't really know what had happened, or why I was so hysterically happy to hear from him.
Needless to say, I didn't make it to New York last night. I spent the day watching the news with my friend Michele and then stayed over at her and her husband's house, grateful to have friends here in a new city. After hours of trying both on the cell phone and on the land lines, I finally found at that while shaken up and scared, like the rest of us I'm sure, my family and my closest friends are fine. My parents watched the towers fall from the North Shore of Long Island. My mother told me this morning that a friend of theirs has a son and his fiancee missing who worked in Tower 2. I keep thinking about the Triangle Fire in 1911, and all those people who found out their loved ones were dead simply because they never came home. 90 years later, on a horrifyingly larger scale, it seems no different trying to get information.
Here in Philadelphia, the city is quiet - the schools are closed and traffic was very light this morning - every once in awhile you hear a military plane flying with the helicopters overhead. Like most of America, I'm going to give blood tonight. I am going to try to get to New York this weekend. I guess the show does go on. It's hard to be enthusiastic about a play right now, I like to think what we do in the theater is important, but today, trying to write a program note or pick a picture for the brochure seems irrelevant and irreverent. I just want to see my family and friends. I feel obscenely lucky today, that my immediate circle is fine, but I haven't been able to stop crying for really the last day and more when I think about all those people who didn't make it home last night, and all of those who waited for them.
Thanks to all of you who called and e-mailed yesterday, and love to my friends out there.
Julie