Every year on this day I think and think (and think and think and think...) about September 11, 2001. On purpose. I like and want to always remember every emotion and image and article and memorial that surrounded not only the devestating event itself but also the aftermath that still overwhelms this nation. As words and pictures swirl around the media and hopefully other minds today, I am once again recounting one of the saddest days of my life and lifetime and the unnumerable blessings it made and makes me accutely aware of.
I can still remember with the sharpest of clarity the most minute details of almost every minute of that horrific morning. In true form I was wildly late to school that morning. My timing placed me in the classroom just as the television reporting the first crash was being turned off. The remaining minutes of class were spent confused on my part - not highly unusual, come to think of it - only as to why we were even watching t.v. in class. Clearly, the literal seconds of the broadcast I caught weren't enough to translate even a suggestion of the enormity of what had just transpired. I was surprisingly too polite - and retrospectively, too unaware - to interrupt the teacher or a fellow student to ask what was going on. The second class let out I (literally) ran to my car to make a call. Minutes later the second plane hit.
Most hours of the following days are far from forgotten. I never tired of the endless broadcasts. I cried (almost constantly) for the same people and reasons everyone else was. I cried out of devestation and fear. I cried because I simply couldn't not.
I had recently started the job I (still and again) have now. I would jump every opportunity to run any errand. It was an attempt to escape the office as often as possible in an effort to not lose it in front of everyone. I was already the "new girl," after all.
Not every instance of this annual replay is tragic. In the midst of the upheaval of life as we knew it, I "met" my husband. I was wearing a red, white and blue striped ribbon on a safety pin as a brooch when he asked me on our first date!
This morning as I ate breakfast I found myself (don't laugh too hard) singing "I'm proud to be an American" out. loud! and I am. My patriotism wells up inside of me each year around this time and I cling to it for as long as it lasts because I know that when tomorrow comes I will let the memories fade into the background of my life. That is precisely why when this day comes next year I will, once again, reach into the depths of my mind and bring forth the vivid imagery from where it quietly resides the rest of the days of the year and let it play over and over so I will not ever be able to forget what it was, what it meant, and what it is.
post by arre
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