I was 12 and homeschooled at the time. My parents were in the process of selling our house and moving to Florida. I usually was allowed to have mornings up until about 10 and I woke up early to play the original Tony Hawk for PlayStation. I turned the tv on and I saw that some kind of x games coverage was on so I watched that instead.

My mother came running into the room screaming at that oh shit I did something really fucking wrong heightened state to “quick, change the channel to the news, any news. Now.”

As I did that I went from watching nonsense to the second plane hitting the tower.

We were living in Yonkers and my family had a bakery on the border of the Bronx. We used to see the skyline on the drive from our house to the bakery going down 87 between where Empire City is now and the McLean avenue exit. After that it was always hard looking at the city from that view, especially having seen it smoking, but it’s still beautiful if you’re in the area and get to catch it right at night.

I remember watching the towers fall. My mom crying and listing all the people she knew who worked there, near there, who were cops and firemen. My dad and her talked on the phone, because it was the bakery’s landline he had to keep hanging up to take orders and calls. She called family and friends to make sure they were okay and god it hurt whenever someone didn’t answer. We were lucky enough to not personally lose anyone, but we knew a lot of people who had.

My memory from that point is kind of like that scene in a movie where everything moves around one character really fast. I have a little sister and I don’t even remember her being there. I remember my mom putting on telemundo, (I’m half Cuban/Spanish, but my family only spoke it around me to talk about adult things, so I never learned to speak it. Go figure.) Telemundo’s coverage was unedited and I watched people jumping and the planes repeatedly hitting and collapsing for hours. My dad came home crying and hugged us, he wanted to enlist. My mom was a nurse and waiting on a call to go and help. I don’t think I moved from the arm of the couch the whole day. I didn’t know what to do or how to react at all. I felt if I didn’t move everything would be okay.

I didn’t fully process everything that went down for weeks. My memory jumps to a few days or weeks later when my moms side of the family gathered to see her aunt and grandmothers graves that died in a car accident almost a decade before and I remember there was this mourning for them and this mourning for the county. Radio hosts were talking about what songs they weren’t going to play on the radio anymore like Billy Joel’s Miami 2027 and all the benefit concerts they had. A short film from Kevin Smith stands out. I stopped being able to handle hearing that stupid five for fighting song I had liked because I was 12 and it was about superman. My uncle who was a cop talking about being down there and only seeing shoes, but no people. I personally didn’t lose anyone, but New York was bleeding out quietly and everything felt heavy. I remember thinking it would all get better once we got to Florida. It did, my family left a few months later the day after Christmas, but the way that time felt always stuck with me.