Nine Eleven

The day the towers fell coincided with my first doctors appointment after I found out I was pregnant with Girlie. I was seven weeks along at that point and still pretty nervous. I knew I was pregnant, but nothing about me had really changed yet and it just didn't seem real.

My appointment wasn't until 10:30 AM so I had been lingering over my morning coffee watching the end of the Today Show when the news broke. I wasn't dressed yet and I sat there glued to the couch until I finally had scramble to get dressed and dash out of the house with barely enough time to make it to the office.

It turned out that the doctors office decided to cancel the remaining appointments for the day, and I was the last patient to be seen before they closed the office. It was all anyone could talk about, the doctors, the nurses, the receptionist. We all watched the news as the nurse checked my blood pressure, as I stepped on a scale, as I had blood taken, as I was shown to the examining room. It was impossible to believe that those two enormous buildings had disappeared, and yet, there it was.

Finally, I left the office, with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and some fuzzy pictures of a tiny blob growing inside me. The pregnancy was real.

The devastation was real too. And even harder to comprehend.