****I meant to post this yesterday, but between my everyday routine and other things that came up, I was never able to get back on to post it, so its being posted now.***
11 years and 2 more kids later- who actually ever COULD forget 9-11? Its like any other major event in your life, marking a set point in time. Births, marriages, deaths… there are just some things you never forget- even if you want to.
This morning, I was woken up by my excited 12 year old, showing off how he looks in his new baseball gear. He knew he still had to get ready for school, but he also knew that -with hubby’s schedule- the chance of showing HIM how he looked wouldn’t happen for a while. I could hear that the littlest Disaster was awake, as well, so I put up the baby gate on the bathroom so that he wouldn’t get into the cat box. Again. Then I struggled to wake Bug up so he would get ready for school. Then? I headed back to bed after handing the baton off to hubby so I could get a couple more minutes of shut eye before my day REALLY began. Always an exciting morning here at Boystown.
11 years ago -with only one kiddo and still living with my parents- I woke up to my mom watching the news. There had been an accident- a bomb or SOMETHING- that had gone off in one of the Twin Towers. I know what the news was SAYING- a plane had crashed into the tower- but planes don’t do that. I wasn’t an expert, but don’t they make that kind of impossible? I mean, they have a million different controls and buttons and switches, all with the specific purpose of keeping planes from doing that sort of thing. Navigational equipment to let them know how high and where to fly. TONS of training for the pilots to ensure that they don’t send an idiot up 30,000 some odd feet in the air with a flying weapon.
But not more than a couple of seconds after thinking all of that, we saw it happen again- live- as another plane crashed into the second tower.
I was holding Camo- he was only a little over a year then. I kept looking at him and wondering what this would mean for him and all of our futures. I was only 21, but even if I look back at how I was then and think how immature I used to be, that was one day I felt far too grown up.
I went to work that day, hoping to busy myself, but that ended up not happening as my boss informed me that we were closing down for the day. The big wigs didn’t feel it was right to keep us working when so much was going on.
Once I got home, there was nothing to do but watch the news with all its horrific images. It was on every channel. Smoke, people running, mayhem… If I tried really hard to make believe, I could almost imagine I was watching some terrible movie, but once I saw the images that they showed over and over again of the hopeless people jumping out of the buildings out of sheer desperation, I had to turn off the TV. It was all too much.
Other planes had gone down- one into the Pentagon and another -Flight 93- who’s plan was thwarted by some courageous individuals onboard who gained control and crashed it into a field in Pennsylvania to keep the hijackers from being able to carry through with their plan. Airports everywhere began to account for all their planes. Flights were canceled, planes were told to land, and airspace was closed for a while after.
You never realize how used to something you’ve been until its no longer there. We were at the beach the day that planes were finally allowed to fly again, and it was a little scary seeing a plane in the sky. Life was getting back to normal, and yet, it wasn’t. The news was still grim, and fear was still in the air.
It wasn’t any different the next day, though, or the next. At first, the news was filled with reports of finding survivors and then it was filled with news of finding the dead; and all the while, for the next 8 months or so, it was filled with news of the clean up effort.
Its been 11 years. My kids are growing up in a world I never had to deal with, and I often wonder sometimes what their lives might have been like if that day had just gone on the way it should have. The shock of what happened has faded; we no longer fear planes flying in the sky, and flying is still a major mode of transportation. Whatever the terrorists had planned, it didn’t work.
And yet…
I still get goosebumps when I see pictures from that day. I still get choked up when I see photos of the firefighters rushing in when everyone else is rushing out.
Forget?
Not likely.
***If you enjoyed this, I'd love for you to stop by Boystown and visit me! www.confessionsfromboystown.com***
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