Wake-Up Call by Kristen Breitweiser

Author:Kristen Breitweiser [BREITWEISER, KRISTEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 0759568308
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2006-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas was only a few weeks away—the second Christmas since 9/11. I had decided that Caroline and I would get away and not endure the pain of staggering through the holidays at home. Sunshine and the beach were always an irresistible combination for me. I decided we’d go to Florida, booked a flight, and made hotel reservations. I convinced myself that I was ready to confront my fear of flying, my heart-stopping, paralyzing fear of getting on a plane at a New York City airport and seeing the skyline drop away from beneath the plane’s wings. Mind over matter. That was my mantra. Two years was time enough to be a prisoner of my own fears. It was silly and stupid. Mind over matter. It was completely unrealistic to think I’d never fly again for the rest of my life. I’m a pragmatic woman and this made no sense. That was as far as I got with logic.

The panic attacks started again. I’d had them intermittently in the months after 9/11. I’d hear planes fly overhead, often while driving in the car, and my heart would race and I would shudder. Sometimes I’d feel short of breath. I’d see planes exploding in my mind. I’d have flashbacks jolting me in a severe mental whiplash to the precise moment when Flight 175 had sliced into Ron’s building.

As the trip to Amelia Island drew closer, I paced around the house, fending off panic attacks, hyperventilating and trying to regain control. I was having trouble sleeping. Suddenly it all seemed ridiculous. I didn’t need to go to Florida that badly. What was the rush to get on an airplane, anyway?

I then looked into Amtrak. Unfortunately, all the train reservations to Florida were already booked for the holiday. I canceled the trip, eating the $4,000 and opting for a quiet Christmas alone with Caroline and Sam.

We stayed home and had our own weird little Christmas. Caroline was too young to notice its strangeness—umm, organic pizza for our Christmas feast—but I had spared her from something that could have been potentially worse: seeing her mother dissolve in panic on an airplane. I held out hope, in theory at least, that Christmas might be happy, even joyful, again in the future. It was out there in the realm of possibility like those monkeys that someday might type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

Being home allowed me to get work done on the commission. After Kissinger backed out, names were being bandied about regarding potential replacements. Every time a name surfaced, I spent at least forty-eight hours researching for potential conflicts. When Tom Kean, a Republican and former New Jersey governor, was nominated as chairman and heartily accepted, we felt gratified. We had done our on-line detective work and found links to Amerada Hess, an oil company, but that conflict was nothing compared with Kissinger’s connections. Kean had a solid reputation as being a decent man of integrity.

We asked to meet with him and he agreed, which surprised us.

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