“Diary of a Tragedy” is a daily column written by New York City residents with Maine ties who will share in coming days their experiences of the World Trade Center tragedy. Caitlin Shetterly is the daughter of Susan Hand Shetterly of Surry and Robert Shetterly of Brooksville. She works as a writer and actress in Manhattan.

I awoke Tuesday morning just before 10 to the ringing of both our phone lines. As my eyes opened, I heard my mother’s voice on the answering machine calling from her home in Maine, then a hang-up, then another ring, then her voice, “Caitlin. Pick up. Pick up. I need to know you’re OK.”

I turned to my boyfriend, David, whose body had gone suddenly rigid.

“David,” I said, “Something’s very wrong.”

The phone rang again and it was David’s mother. When I answered all I heard was, “a bomb, a plane” and then, “World Trade Center.”

The phone beeped and it was my mother again. In her relief at hearing me, her voice broke and a soft sob came across the line. As she began to speak, David turned on the television, and with her on the phone and David’s mother on the other line, we watched together in silence as the first World Trade Center tower collapsed, then the second – that’s all we could do: watch and sit here helplessly on our couch while it happened.

Tuesday morning, we had only just begun to understand the tragedy of what has happened here in our city. My mother only said, “Think about getting out of New York – this may be only the beginning.”

Outside we heard the wailing sirens, and then ambulances, police cars, and firetrucks flying past our apartment on West 96th Street out to the West Side Highway. The sound faded as they headed downtown, then reappeared again on our TV screen.

Those of us here in New York City who live far enough away from where the World Trade Center once stood – far enough to be safe and far enough to rue the day our lives were spared and our neighbors and friends taken – have listened all day and all night to the scream of sirens, our walls painted with the flashing lights. We have sat together in front of the TV set or next to our radios, through the day, through the night and into the second day. And we are just now beginning to believe that this really happened. Shock has given way to fallout, and we are torn apart.

Every once in a while in history there is a watershed moment that redefines our frame of reference – how we look at ourselves, how we see ourselves in the world. Sept. 11, 2001, is one such moment. Every task or job or want we may have now feels irrelevant in the face of such devastation and tragedy. It is now up to us to decide who we are as a nation, as a city, as a people.

I am proud that the mayor of my city, Rudolph Giuliani, has made clear that we must bond together as “brothers and sisters,” that we must not accuse any group within the city, that we must understand that the people who committed such heartless acts of atrocity are not our neighbors, not New Yorkers. Today, we look to our leaders for solace, guidance and protection and to give voice to our raw emotions. And those of us who did not vote for the current administration must hope deeply and desperately that President Bush will seize this moment and rally in a manner that is peaceful yet still defends us, loving and strong.

The phone continues to ring here in our apartment. It rang through the night, and rings this morning – people calling to make sure we’re alive, people calling to tell us that a friend is safe or that a brother is still missing, that a sister cannot be found. And as our president quoted Psalm 23 so shall I, because as we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” this long day’s journey into night, I think of Henry V’s words from his famous St. Crispin’s Day speech: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”

Today, in New York City, we are galvanized, we are brothers and sisters, we will help one another and love one another in the face of this tragedy.