Sgt. Nathaniel Metts arrived at his National Guard post on the corner of 15th and K streets at 4 o'clock this morning, ready to greet workaday Washington in his fatigues and military police armband, two Humvees at his side. As the sun came up and workers began passing by him – women in heels, men in suits, construction workers in hard hats and dusty denim – Metts felt an outpouring he'd never experienced in this city.
Today, the day when people all over the country returned to their so-called "normal" lives after two days of shock and horror and grief, Washington was different. The sights were different. The smells. The traffic. The simple feel of the city had changed.
And so, too, had its people.
"Before," Metts said, "it was like people hadn't had their coffee yet, so they're not speaking. Everyone lived in their own space. Now, the tragedy, it seems like it's enlightened people, changed their perspectives."
People said hello. They said, "Thank you" and "God bless you," as they continued on to work, seemingly less hurried than usual. Coffee was offered. Tea. Doughnuts. Two young men pulled up in their car, rolled down a window, and handed out an American flag, which Metts perched on one of the Humvees.
"It's been amazing," he said.
Amazing, too, to see two Humvees, painted in camouflage, sitting on 15th Street NW on a Thursday morning. There was a sense of unreality to it, unreality and unease. Nothing was normal.
Traffic was congested, though most people seemed less bothered than usual. There were fewer cutoffs, less of that angry honking that happens at stoplights and crowded intersections. Roads were closed in spots all over the city – in front of the fire station on U Street NW, for example – forcing a change in the once steady rhythm of a morning commute.
In some areas near the Capitol, cars were stopped and people were asked to show identification out their windows. Others had to show ID at their parking garages.
The almost omnipresent fire engines and ambulances – and the seemingly endless wail of sirens – gave pause, and in some, even prompted a ripple of fear. Could something else happen? The Pentagon ceased search and rescue efforts for about two hours after a man called in a bomb threat just before 6 a.m. American University shut down abruptly after bomb threats were phoned in to the campus, where students were just returning to classes. Classes were canceled, buildings evacuated, non-essential employees sent home.
In public schools and daycare centers, parents lingered a few minutes longer than usual at drop-off, going to their knees for one last hug. Teachers struggled to figure out what to tell their students. Linda Safran, a professor of art history at Catholic University, found herself talking by cell phone to her husband, a William and Mary professor, about what to tell her students that morning.
"I'm the adult," she said. "I have to say something to them."
Near McPherson Square, Stephanie Holly sat on a bench outside her office, taking a smoke break. Inside the office, she said, the phones wouldn't stop ringing. So much to do, so much catch-up. And always, the television playing in the background, a constant reminder of what had taken place. "It's just different," she said, and then a fire truck pulled up next to her, parked by the Metro station, officers emerging. She nodded at the sight, as if to say, "There, see what I mean."
There was no escaping the images, the reminders. At High Noon, a restaurant on the corner of K and 15th streets NW, a handwritten sign was taped over a board on the sidewalk outside. "Free 8 oz. soup to Blood Donors While Supplies Last!" it reads.
Across the street, on a corner, Karen Hurley ticked off all the things that had changed in her once routine workday life. Coming in from Alexandria, she drove by the Pentagon, unable to avoid staring at the smoldering wreckage. To get from her parking garage to the office, she had to go through Franklin Park, where she passed National Guardsmen and their Humvee. The Humvee is visible from her office window, an almost unavoidable sight.
She e-mailed her parents in Chicago, to tell them – about the Humvee, about the military presence, about what life feels like in the nation's capital.
"I'm not sure I'm in the United States," she wrote.
