Letter to a Wellesley Classmate in D.C.

Thank you so much for writing--I'm so glad that you and yours are okay. How scary for you to be dating someone who works at the Pentagon. You made pretty good time if you had to walk all the way home. You must have mad blisters!

It's all just unbelievable--I was about to leave home, and just making a quick call to some workmen who had started (badly and crookedly) on a fence adjacent to my house, and I had the TV on kinda watching the news at the same time. When it hit me what had happened, I just started freaking out, and I was so upset I couldn't leave for 45 minutes or so because I kept on having to go wash my face after each new outrage/disaster. The complete collapse of both towers is so unbelievably shocking. Last time I was in NYC two years ago, I went to the top of Tower One with my mom to enjoy the view, and bought discount theatre tickets at the TKTS booth there, like I always do. Then we went shopping at Century 21 across the street. And now it's all gone. Just a hole in the sky. Unbelievable...

I was so worried about you, and just praying that you were out of harm's way. I'm afraid the news from NYC isn't going to be good. I wonder how many of our Wellesley classmates and friends were working in downtown Manhattan today. I hope that a lot of people were voting in the mayoral primaries and were late to work, and thus never made it into the building.

Here at work, we've all been crowding around the TV off and on all day. Anyway, let me know if you think a visit to our nation's capital is still a good idea. They're going to have to change the name for popular sites from "tourist attractions" to "targets." Well, stay in touch - maybe they'll figure out how and why this all happened.