9/11. Live and on tape. (09.06.22)

9/11. Live and on tape. (09.06.22)
In our old house outside of town, I used to work out in the mornings after the kids were picked up for school. I relieved the drudgery of the NordicTrack in a not-very-ennobling way, recording reruns of an over-dramatized medical show of the time called ER and watching them on tape. Each one ran about forty-five minutes when you fast-forwarded through the commercials, about right for the NordicTrack. It was my downtime.
 
On the morning of September 11 of 2001, the taped episode had a peculiarly simple story. A woman came to the emergency room, the ER, screaming. Loudly, continuously, pausing only for breath. The other characters fluttered around in their subplots, but they were only punctuation to a continuous thread of shrieks.
 
The phone rang. I paused the tape, stepped off the machine and answered, panting. A friend told me to turn on the TV; something had happened in New York. I changed channels. After a few minutes, I thought to hit the “record” button on the tape machine.
 
And that is how I happen to have a full recording of the live news coverage of the attack on the World Trade Center. Long static shots of the city skyline, confusion and smoke in a blue sky. Newspeople struggling for words. The fall of the towers. Stunned New Yorkers stumbling through ash, then hijacked Flight 93 and the crash at the Pentagon. The beginning of the tidal wave of fright and profound uncertainty that enveloped us all. Twenty plus years later, it has not receded from our national consciousness. Or from mine.
 
I never went back to that VHS tape, but I have laid it away. The words “ER” were scribbled on its faded label, and crossed out. The scribbling now says “9/11”.
 
I think every year about the shrieks of that good actor in that bad television show, and of other sounds of that day, both individual and collective.  Murmurs and gasps, and a shared sharp intake of breath. Holding silence, watching. And a kind of national groaning. I don’t know if there can be traces of previous recordings on physical tapes, but when I put my hand on it now, our very small family memento of that terrible day, I sometimes think I can hear a faint echo of, well, something.
 
It might be screaming.  
Photo credits: Michael Foran (https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixorama/) & Paul Seling | Pixels