I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me across the white tile, swerving between the large crowds of people standing in the large terminal. As an effect of me bumping into a man’s left leg, he accidentally tilted his coffee cup over and sent a small stream of piping hot coffee onto the spot in the back of my head where the patches of hair all around my head seemed to come together in a swirl. But I hardly even noticed. The reason for my ecstatic refusal of pain? My father was coming home after he had been gone for a week on a business convention.

My name’s Michael Kitteridge and this is my collection of memories from that day as best as I can remember them.

Pushing past two girls standing together but talking on cell phones, I finally found my way to where my mother was sitting. She had the biggest smile on her face as she reached forward and held her hands open. I reached out my right arm and pulled out the thin pack of Starburst I had retrieved from the vending machine across the large aisle/hallway-thing between the terminals and a string of restaurants, bars and paperback retailers.

After pouring a handful of cherry, strawberry and lemon squares into her hands, I hopped up into my seat. I was eight years old at the time and short for my age, so getting up into the slightly raised seat was quite a hassle. I leaned back into the headrest and closed my eyes.

“Hey Mikey,” began my mother. “Are you okay, buddy?”

I looked up at her and saw that she was worried I was having another headache. You see, back when I was a kid, I used to get headaches all the time. I got it from my dad and he got it from his dad and so on and so on, so it was kind of a Kitteridge man tradition to get horrible headaches. But luckily, I had only closed my eyes because I wanted to bask in the sheer ecstasy of knowing my father’s return was only hours away.

“Yeah mom!” I slapped a smile on my face and looked up at her. “It’s not a headache, I swear!” She cocked her head and looked at me with a doubting suspicion in her eye.

“Are you sure?” She accentuated the last word as if it might make me nervous and break my foundation. But I stood strong (I was telling the truth, so it wasn’t hard) and looked her deep in the eye.

“Yes mother. I’m fine.” I tried to say it as monotone as possible to assure my voice didn’t show any signs of lying taking place.

She turned to the side and leaned back in her seat before closing her eyes and running her hand through my hair. It was 8:38 and I knew the plane would be a while, so I took my CD player out from my coat and slipped the headphones over my head. After pressing play, I found myself listening to Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now”. The song had always been a favorite of mine and I loved slipping away into the safe, cozy haven it offered.

After the song was finished I found myself listening to the next track on my custom mix CD: The Flaming Lip’s “Pilot Can at the Queer of God”. What was a headache-inducing feedback shower to most people was simply heaven in music to me. I opened my eyes and scanned the terminal, searching for anything to note of any interest. I saw a young couple arguing about something I didn’t care to know about (as dad always said: “Some people’s business is just some people’s business”). A man leaned over with coffee in his hand to pick up his briefcase and I watched with glee as the top fell off and coffee ran all over the side of the expensive leather briefcase.

I reached behind my head and rubbed the soar spot on my small bald spot and wondered if this was the same man who spilled coffee there. If so, my head was avenged by destiny. I giggled at the thought and brought the attention of my mother. She looked down at me laughing and followed my line of sight before looking at the poor businessman who had spilled his coffee all over his nice things. She snapped her head back at me with a look of anger in her eye.

“Michael! Don’t laugh at—“

And that’s when it happened. Her eyes looked upward for a split second and I watched her look back down before stopping and pulling a slow-motion double take. Her jaw slowly began dropping and I turned to see what she was staring at. The screen of the large TV on the other side of the terminal was showing some building I didn’t immediately recognize on fire.

A lady somewhere in the terminal screamed.

“Yeah. This just in,” began a reporter whose face I could not see on screen. I looked around the room and watched as people slowly turned from their small conversations and averted their attention to the TV screen that seemed to captivate everyone. The arguing couple lowered their hands and turned as one to look up at the screen. The businessman stopped furiously wiping his coat and stared into the screen. At this moment in time, everyone in the terminal was united as one staring at the very thing a wise man once said would destroy our society.

“You're looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there,” continued the voice. I can’t remember if it was a lady or a man, but I do remember the words that were said. I stared up into the screen and watched as a very tall building slowly burned into the sky. The smoke was amazing. It billowed out from either side of the building and connected at the top of the building, creating a black blanket that covered the sky and captivated the nation.

“That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.” The voice paused for a second and I refused to listen any more. I don’t know how I knew but somewhere deep inside I was just assured that the plane which had flown into the building on the TV and no doubt killed everyone inside both was my father’s. My head dropped and I didn’t even need to look up to know that my mother’s hand was covering her quivering mouth while silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She knew too.

And somehow it felt like everyone in the terminal knew. The people in that plane were the people we loved dearly and were waiting for. Even the people simply waiting for American Airlines Flight 11’s next boarding were pulled into the moment. We stared at one of three places.

The first place that caught our eyes was the television. We watched in horror as we watched a much-loved building burn into the heavens and take numerous lives along with it. We listened as a reporter desperately tried to keep themselves together while reporting the news and receiving them at the same time. In many ways, I see this person as one of the bravest that day.

The second place that may have caught our eyes was our feet. We tilted our heads downward and stared at our shoes in disbelief. Why is it that in moments of intense emotion, one feels compelled to stare at their feet? Is it because we don’t want to face the faces of others who might see our frail forms in the open? Is it because we know our feet won’t stare back at us and judge our weaknesses? Whichever explanation is the true reason, people may have felt compelled to avert their attention to the ground.

And the third and last place that a person may have looked at, if only for a brief moment before returning to one of the other two already mentioned was at our fellow man. We stared into each other’s eyes and saw fear and weakness outnumbering the few brave and courageous among us who kept themselves together. Looking at a crowd of people, whichever nationality they may be, all huddled together and feeling the same way is an overwhelming experience that can only be handled for so long.

I for one looked at each and every one of these three places I described. As a child, it may have been my short attention span not being able to handle the grief or it may have been my mind trying to find someone else to live my pain through, but I couldn’t help but swivel my head in every possible direction before I finally found myself staring up at my mother.

She had her head in her hands and was bawling at this point. I stared up at her before finally losing my independent nerve and standing up to grab her head and hold her against my small chest. She cried into my shirt and I lowered my head before crying into her hair. She reached her arms around my form and took me into her arms. And we stayed like that until we had cried all the tears which could have been cried in one sitting.

When we finally pulled away, she wiped the snot and tears away from her face and I did the same. Then we stood and walked away from the terminal hand-in-hand, not uttering a single word but consoling each other the whole way back to the car.