It was early in the summer of 2001 that we learned our oldest son, Peter, was having severe problems with his blood pressure. Our doctor decided that although he was overweight and that could be causing some of the problem, at the ripe old age of 23 he should not be having these
kinds of problems with it. So Dr. Fletcher scheduled several tests and decided that Peter needed to see a specialist. Finally it was determined that Peter had a large cyst growing inside his abdomen that was putting pressure on blood vessels and organs and it needed to be removed. Surgery was scheduled for September 12, 2001.
September 11, 2001 started out as a regular day for us, just like it did for most of the six plus billion people on earth. Over here on our side of the world the day continued as planned. I don’t even remember the day, it was so uneventful. Lyudmilla came at 4:00 for my Russian lesson and I spent two hours struggling through verbs and verbs of motion – again. Mel sat in the office, writing on the computer, then playing a game while he waited for my lesson to finish so we could begin dinner. Lyudmilla stood and began gathering her books and glasses and putting everything away in her carry-all bag and purse.
The phone rang.
I heard Mel say: “Andrei! How are you, brother?” I knew Andrei was out of the country – in fact, he was in Uzbekistan at a conference. I wondered if he had returned earlier than planned. Mel was silent for a moment and then responded, “No, the television is off. Cindie is in her Russian lesson. --- Oh, hold on – Cindie – turn on the tv, Andrei is calling from Uzbekistan and says something terrible is happening in America!”
I quickly went around Lyudmilla to the tv and switched it on. And the world stopped.
Even now as I type these words, the tears come into my eyes, it is hard to catch my breath and I start to cry.
I remember putting my hand across my mouth as I watched the replay of the first plane crash into the building. We were watching a CNN feed with Ukrainian voice over. We could read the English at the bottom but understood very little of what was happening. I asked Lyudmilla to translate and she tried. It was all very confusing. Something about the Japanese Red Army had attacked the United States. That was the thing that stood out to her. Suddenly a second plane and then within moments the World Trade Center began to fall.
I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. My chest hurt, it was hard to breath. I looked at Lyudmilla and said: “They don’t know what they have done. They don’t know what they have done! They have woken the Sleeping Giant – and they don’t know what they have done.”
I was sobbing. Mel, Lyudmilla and I – we three standing together in our livingroom watching September 11 unfold via televised broadcast. To this day, I don’t know what the timeline was – were we watching some of it live, or was it all video repeat? I’ve never taken the time to figure out the time difference and make a time line.
Lyudmilla decided to leave and we quietly let her out the door. Melinda was in the States but our short-term teammate needed to know. I tried calling Lisa – I called and called. She had a strange phone system – she and her landlady shared the phone, so every time I called her landlady answered first. Finally, I asked the landlady – “Please go upstairs and see if Lisa is home – something terrible is happening in America.” At that point I couldn’t get out enough Russian to try and explain. I asked her to tell Lisa to turn on her tv. Lisa wasn’t home, but awhile later she called and asked what was up, her landlady had stopped her as she came in and said I’d called all upset. I told her – turn on your tv.
After watching the initial reports on tv and not understanding at all what was happening (why would Japan be attacking the US???), Mel immediately got on the internet and started downloading email. We are signed up to receive CNN news alerts and they started coming in. Dozens of them. The news just kept getting worse. Reports of what happened at the Pentagon. Later, reports about the plane in Pennsylvania. On television the Ukrainian voice over finally stopped – they couldn’t keep up. I was so thankful! I kept thinking – “just shut up and let me listen to the English!” We were able to listen to CNN then for the first time in English.
Sometime later that night we heard President Bush address the nation. I thought to myself as I watched him – this is the first time I have heard my president’s voice! I am living in 2001 with all of our instant communications and I have never heard his voice before (everything is voiced over here, including all news report clips from other countries).
During the whole evening I wondered about Peter. He was supposed to have surgery the next day. We didn’t know if there would be more attacks, or where they might occur. Colorado Springs is a main target due to NORAD, the Air Force Academy, Falcon Air Station, Fort Carson and other military installations in the area. Was my family safe? We couldn’t get through to the States on the phone lines. So email became our connection home. He needed the surgery as soon as possible – would it happen?
We share our phone line with our neighbors and when we are on the phone, they cannot use theirs, it’s dead. When they are on theirs, we cannot use ours. They have complained to us several times that we are on the phone too much. They’ve come and knocked on our door at midnight and asked us to get off the internet so they can receive a call from Far East Russia. So, I kept expecting someone to come and knock on our door – but no one did. We were on the phone for hours, downloading email, making phone calls to people here, downloading more email. (Thank you, neighbors, for understanding our need!)
Our first concern after the safety of our family was: money. How much money did we have in the house. Not much. Would the banking system be ok the following day, would we be able to use a bankomat machine (ATM) and pull several hundred dollars? What was going to happen to the exchange rate?
Then we realized that all planes around the world had been grounded. If Peter did have his surgery the next day and something happened and we needed to get home right away – we couldn’t. No matter how much money we had, no matter what we did – we could not go home. That was one of the most frightening moments I’ve ever had. At that point, we had no idea if we would ever be able to go home. Rumors and more rumors. People were calling us now, when they could get through, asking us if any of our family was in the World Trade Center, giving us their condolences over what was happening in America.
So many things were happening, so many thoughts going through my mind.
- Peter’s surgery
- Can we get home again, and when
- Our Ukrainian friends understood more than we will ever know – their country has been attacked many times throughout history, plus they had just recently gone through the collapse of their government, disintegration as a major world power and the reestablishment of their country as an individual, independent country.
- Would the terrorists attack again in the States
- Would they begin attacking Americans outside the US more than before
- Would we have enough money available to buy food, etc. for as long as it took for events to work out
The next day we immediately went to the local bankomat at a nearby bus stop. Several people on the street stared at us, some of the old women sitting at their tables selling sunflower seeds and cigarettes leaned over toward each other, and started whispering together, watching us the whole time. The bankomat worked, we got out dollars and then went to find an exchange booth. The exchange rate had changed, not for the better for us, so we exchanged it all in anticipation that the exchange rate would get worse. Fortunately, the Ukrainian government immediately put in effect a freeze on the exchange rate and it could not go up or down until world events had stabilized again. We still had some supplies left from the Y2K scare possibilities – stored water for the toilet, some canned goods that we had been using up, etc. But when we heard the government had already taken these emergency steps we were no longer concerned about the immediate money issues.
We still did not know if Peter would have his surgery. Somehow during the day we found out that yes, it was still going to happen. Life for me was like living in that proverbial “limbo land.” Everything stopped inside, nothing was important except what was happening on the television and what was happening with my son. Later that evening as I sat crying again, Mel told me – NO MORE EMAIL. NO MORE TELEVISION. He went over to the tv, switched it to video and popped in my favorite movie –
You’ve Got Mail. I watched it, headachy from crying, eyes scratchy and red, trying not to think or worry or even pray any more because my prayers had turned into worrying at God.
Mel was busy doing some things, I was watching tv. And suddenly, there in the middle of the movie was something I had never seen before. It never made any difference to me before. But there was the Tom Hanks character, his father and grandfather all together in their office in one of the top floors of one of the Towers. I told Mel – I wonder how many times this is going to happen? A movie, a book, someone’s personal photos we’ll be looking at – and there will be a reminder of This Day.
I stayed up – I could not sleep. I waited and waited for a phone call from home. I sat in the dark, praying for Peter, praying for my country, praying for Mel and me and that I would trust God in this situation. Finally, sometime around 4 am or later, the phone rang. Mom had waited until they got home from the hospital to call. Peter’s surgery went well. The removed the cyst, he was expected to make a full recovery (and he did, although he had a bad time with a staph infection in the incision later). She explained to me that the doctor was shocked at the size of the cyst, it was much larger than they had expected. When he described it, he held out his hands and showed my parents and two other kids a shape about the size between a soccer ball and a basketball. After talking for a few minutes I was able to go to bed and finally sleep.
We went home at the end of October, as originally planned, for our first Home Ministry Assignment. We flew into Atlanta. What a shock to get off the plane and be met by soldiers with machine guns. In my country. In my America – the land of the free and the home of the brave, soldiers at the airports. Mel and I went through security and were told to step aside. A soldier came up to Mel, told him to pull his pant legs up above his boot tops, and stand spread eagle. I thought they were going to take his clothes off before it was over. I stood at the side watching and when the soldier was finished and had stepped aside, I walked up to him and said, “Thank you.” He looked at me with a surprised look on his face and then grinned.
America had changed. We had changed. Nothing will ever be the same. Here in Ukraine we heard words of sympathy, we heard words of “America deserved it for what she did in Kosovo.” Some of these attitudes we understood, some made no sense to us, like the Kosovo thing (NATO bombed Kosovo, not the US). I am more aware today that I am a stranger, I am a foreigner. I am more aware that something might happen in the States and it would be hard or impossible for us to return. I am left with feelings of insecurity that I never had before. I am more aware that America is not always correct politically – I see the States through ‘world eyes’ now. But I also know that we did not “deserve” what happened on 9/11. I know that no matter what the US does in foreign policy, most of the world will be unhappy about it. That’s the way things work. I am proud to be an American. I am thankful for my American passport. I would say, with thousands of others, “God bless America,” except that I also see the sin and moral decay that is happening in the States and know that there is really no reason why God should bless her. I say: “God have mercy on the United States.”
The Sleeping Giant is really awake now. I’m not sure what I think of that. In many ways it was much simpler to be the me I was before I lived outside of the US.
God, please have mercy on the United States. I have no other words – Have Mercy on us.
