Sirens, Silence, and September

Last night -- just a few hours ago, really, since it's now four in the friggin' morning -- I lay in bed and heard lots of sirens not too far from my house.  Police and fire ones, I believe.  I've heard more of them lately, or is it that as we close in on another anniversary of September 11, I hear them more acutely?

There has been a much more visible police presence in my neighborhood, since several local shopkeepers have been shot and killed, apparently by the same assailant.  And of course, at around the time I drop my kids off at martial arts class, the traffic police are around looking for expired meters and busting fools who run red lights or make illegal u-turns. 

But last night, the rushing sirens on their rushing vehicles took me back to that "stupid bloody Tuesday" eleven years ago.   I remember, walking the big street near my house at about ten o'clock that night, how stunningly quiet it all was.   The stores were all closed.  The highway was absolutely empty.   Anyone else walking around was silent, dazed.   And then from time to time, the sirens smashed the silence, by then seemingly like the workers scrambling to remove the rubble, hoping for someone to rescue. 

I remember sending an e-mail late that night, or maybe the next day, letting people know we were okay, and to give blood -- a gesture that was tragically unnecessary at that moment, since the hospitals too were waiting for more people to come in that night, but so few ultimately did.  Phone lines were generally useless, overused and/or down. (How different would that day have unfolded had Facebook and Twitter existed?  Might a few more lives have been saved? What if someone had been able to Tweet on the first plane, heading for the North Tower? Might as well wonder "if only" the polio vaccine had been discovered forty years earlier than it was.) 

I sit here writing, dazed as I was eleven years ago, seven miles from death.  Dazed from lack of sleep, dizzy from a splitting headache, hoping the sun rises soon, waiting for my kids to wish my good morning, as my oldest, then only 16 months old, managed to do on 9/12.