The Strangeness That Is Our Lives

I think it was 12 and 34. Twelve in First Class and 34 in coach, if I'm not mistaken. A very light passenger load -- but school was back in session and the summer holiday traffic had, thankfully, ended. I was sipping on one of my very first cups ever of green tea, compliments of my co-worker Christine. The time was just before seven in the morning and we had just been handed our final paperwork and were prepared to close the main cabin door on our MD-80 flight to Phoenix. It was just to be a turn for us -- down to Phoenix and back to Portland, home by 1pm or so. On our way to gate C21 just a few minutes earlier, we had noticed the large flat-screen TV in the bar had CNN on. Some little airplane had flown itself into the World Trade Tower in New York. The other two flight attendants had gone ahead while I stayed behind to watch a bit more. Hum, weird. And then I continued to the gate. During boarding, our First Officer had his overhead radio playing: "There's another one," he announced to us. And, a short time later, "Something has hit the Pentagon." I remember thinking that there must be a computer or electrical failure and that the FAA's traffic control system must be directing aircraft in the wrong directions. Something was weird.

So, "Are you ready to close the door," the customer service agent asked? It was, after all, just another day at work. One of nearly 33,000 scheduled daily flights to take place in the US on any given day. Sporting the blue polyester uniform like I've done on hundreds of other similar days. Our captain stepped from his seat back out into our forward galley. "Hold on," he said. "I'm not sure we're going anywhere." We waited maybe ten or twenty minutes, all the while making the obligatory "Thank you for your patience and understanding" announcements. Ugh. I hate making those. And I overheard the announcement coming across the aircraft's speakers in the flight deck: "All aircraft in the entire US have been grounded, no flights will be departing. All passengers and crew members must leave the aircraft immediately. The aircraft doors should be closed and secured and the jetways pulled away from all aircraft."

You know, there's just something about wearing a uniform. Any uniform. It seems to sort of create a camaradery. A group or cohesiveness. You sort of understand one another a little better and know what each other may very well be thinking or feeling. You know the routine, the drill. In good times, the stories of weird situations and people are the life of the party. And in difficult times, the stress can be high and the memories cut deep. And the stress of this present day was about to slice as deep as anything in my life. And I didn't even know it quite yet.

We made the announcement to the passengers and they began dragging their bags back out of the overhead bins, complaining, grumbling, per the usual. I remember one irritated, ignorant fellow saying, "We're just going to Phoenix -- there's no way anybody would want to bomb this flight.....let's just go." We did as we were told and left the airplane. A mechanic was standing at the forward boarding door ready to close up the airplane and pull back the boarding jetway. Our lives had already been changed forever.

In our crew room, where all of the flight attendants check in before trips, there were maybe 50 of us gathered. Rumors were flowing, tensions running quite high. This was, after all, our lives. Something we participated in many days a week, numerous months out of the year. We knew it like the back of our hand. But we'd been violated in the grossest of ways. I remember standing near our supervisor's office door when she was on the conference call that would do what had never been done before: "We are closing down the entire airline. No flights would depart for at least the remainder of the day. All flights currently in the air would terminate at their destinations or be diverted immediately to an alternate airport." All flight attendants were to go home and check later with Crew Scheduling. The reality of it for me was that I was to stay home for the next two weeks without working. The flights I'd been scheduled to work were cancelled from the schedule. I remember my first flight back. The nervousness, the strangeness. Everyone was suspect, I stared at everyone. Wondering. No more coming toward the front of the airplane without a sinking feeling in my stomach. Even today, that crosses my mind daily.

The skies were painfully quiet for the next four days. Not a sound. And when you live and work around such noise on a daily basis, you count on it. You know it. You live and breathe it daily. I remember watching a large group of swallows or swifts or some other such birds swirl overhead in the clear fall sky during those four quiet days. It was eerie. They had the sky all to themselves.

It's no wonder that when I happened upon United 93 on TBS last night that I kept saying to my honey, "We don't have to watch this if you don't want to." Man oh man, my tears were (again) a stark reminder of why I love my job and why it's one of the most dissonant places to work in the whole wide world.

Now, go back to that little tiny picture at the top of this post. Take a good look right now at that airplane on the left-hand side of it. Yeah, the one that is a split-second away from striking a skyscraper. It's just about to be the moment that changed all of our lives forever. I can see myself in there just like the actual flight crew members that are inside of that metal tube with passengers all in states of mind that I could never dream of. With uniforms on. Habit. Normal. Everyday life. With people in seats headed nowhere. Our lives continue to evolve.