September 11
Sep 11th, 2008 by Sylvia
I was in the bakery, flour all over my hands and dress….. where were the clean aprons? Customers already sitting in cars at the front door, rushing, waving at them…. please don’t leave, please don’t leave! Finally got the cinnamon rolls out of the oven. mad rush through the door, cash register ringing like crazy. Finally everyone was gone. I headed to the house to check on the children.
They were eating breakfast, my oldest son was up and managing everything. I wandered over to the Today show…. I could watch a little news and look out the window to check for more customers in the bakery parking lot…. Katie was almost panicked as she spoke…. World Trade Center….. wasn’t that building just bombed a few years earlier? ….an airplane crashed into the side of the building… no one knew at first if this was an accident or an attack…. wasn’t long before it was apparent…. an attack on the U.S. who would be so brazen and foolish? …. I sat down hard on the sofa and watched the events unfold. I cried for the loss of life I was witness to. I felt no fear only anger.
My husband called….. we talked about what was going on. What had started out as the usual uber-busy day, became deathly quiet. Leaves blew around the gravel parking lot and from that date forward, I could see the end of our bakery business. It was as if September 11 was the beginning of the death of our bakery. Lots of businesses folded during that time. If we had had less over head I guess we could have made it. But that day for me was the beginning of the end.
The next week, people flocked to Churches….. we had tons of people at church who we had never seen before… nothing like the threat of war to drive people to seek God…. problem is…. after the immediate threat was past, they were also a thing of the past…
