I remember ~ 10 Years

Where were you on September 11, 2001? I will never forget that morning 10 years ago and I am sure you won’t either!

At 6:15 in the California morning I was getting ready for school, having just started my senior year of high school. My mom had just gotten back from Albertson getting milk which was important because we didn’t have television so the radio was our fastest way to receive news. She ran in the house and yelled for us to come listen to the radio (It sounds like this was the 50’s) and told us that there had been an attack on the World Trade Center.

I remember realizing that this was bad, but I was ignorant to what the Trade Center was and couldn’t fathom who would want to attack it. Not only that, but what was an “attack”? Listening to something this monumental on the radio at 6:30 in the morning doesn’t really do justice to the severity of the situation.
The weight of the situation did not hit me until I walked into my homeroom English class at 7:25 am and looked up at the T.V. on CNN and watched as the second tower collapsed in real time.

While I wish I could say that seeing those images on the screen broke my heart, I was too numb and confused to really know how to feel sadness. I felt too removed from the situation to truly feel pain yet. Even after hearing about the other attacks and grounded planes, the magnitude hadn’t hit me.

Until the next day…

Driving around town I saw more American flags and red, white and blue than any Fourth of July on steroids. The newspaper printed American flags for people to put in their windows. There was a collective feeling of commodore among strangers. People’s nerves were worn and emotions were raw.

I was scheduled to go on a recruiting trip to Northwestern for field hockey the following weekend. That was cancelled, then rescheduled. A few weeks later I did go on a recruiting trip and I think that might have been when I really started to feel the effects of the attacks. To say that security was heightened is an understatement. There was hardly ANYONE in the airport, and everyone was hyper alert.

Because 9/11 will ALWAYS be a day seared in my memory, it is hard to fathom that my daughter did not experience it. However, the impact of the attacks still affect her. For that reason, I want to educate her and other young people about that day and the days that followed…

So, where were you on 9/11/01? What were your feelings and emotions?