Monday, September 10, 2012

09/11

Eleven years ago today, September 10th, 2001,  my son was about 8 months old. We were gearing up for my husband's first deployment away from us in his military career. He was scheduled to leave on September 20th.  I was nervous about the separation and how it would effect each of the three of us, but I was relieved that we were living at home (Louisiana) at the time, and my family was close by to help support us. The word "terrorist" and "terrorist attack" were not things that consumed my thoughts or dictated how I planned ahead for trips. I knew they existed, but they seemed like such a foreign concept. Those kind of things just didn't happen on our soil. I thought of them much like people think of any other tragedy they hear about, as something that happened to other people. I went to bed that night counting the days that we had left before Richard was scheduled to leave and thinking about the things we had left to tend to before that day arrived. The next morning arrived and our schedule was as usual. I was a stay at home mom at the time, and went about tending to Brian and our normal morning routine. I fed him breakfast and let him play for a while, I think I was reading a book while he played. It came time for his morning nap, and just as I was laying him down in his crib the phone rang. Richard was on the other end and he asked if I was watching the news. I turned it on while he filled me in that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. It didn't make sense to me, I couldn't process what was happening..then as we were on the phone talking and watching the news, the second plane hit. We saw it hit. Richard said "I have to go, this is a terrorist attack." I remember just standing there with the phone in my hand staring at the TV and trying to understand. The next few hours are a blur and kind of surreal. We were living on base at Barksdale AFB then, and the base was immediately locked down. You couldn't get on or off the base. I was on the phone with my parents filling them in, they didn't have TV's at their workplace. I called my oldest sister, a high school teacher, and told her to get a TV in her room. And then I remember thinking about the fact that Richard was supposed to leave in a few days. How the idea of that had all ready been scary, but now it was...terrifying. I remember seeing the smoke and ash covered faces of people that had made it out of the building. Seeing those that were stuck in the building that felt they had no other choice but to jump. The tears coming down faces. The faces that were obviously in shock. Hearing about the plane that hit the Pentagon. Hearing about the plane that crashed in that field..and everyone on board dying. My son waking up from his nap and wondering what kind of world he had just woken up to..and realizing he would never know anything different. Those next months went by slowly, as we sent Richard off to his deployment and then welcomed him back home. Shortly after, we found out we were moving to England, and while I was excited about the opportunity ahead of us, I was terrified of the unknowns and what could happen. There were two terrorist attacks on the tube in London while we lived there. A friend and I went to London between the two bombings. We rode on the tube and I remember looking at anyone with any bag bigger than a lunchsack with fear and suspicion. My daughter was born there in 2004. Neither of my children, as so many others, will know a world where 09/11 doesn't have the terrible memories that it does now. Will it end up being a memory like Pearl Harbor is to those who didn't live through it? Will complacency take over again? Has it all ready? Our world is forever changed. The lives taken that day will never be forgotten by those of us that witnessed the events unfold. The victims and their families are forever in our thoughts and prayers.
Never forget.

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