Remembering Today

A quick post about the significance of today to me:

9/11 – This day has such an impact on me, and it’s weird because thankfully I didn’t know anyone in the towers or on the planes. However, I think just the thought of what those families and co-workers are going through is enough to send me over the edge.

Luckily for us, my husband and I had not yet started our jobs on 9/11/01. We actually got up early that day…we really never got up before 9:30, but for some reason we were up at 8:30 that morning. We grabbed our bowls of cereal and sat down to watch the Today show. The first thing we see is Katie Couric describing what had been happening…we couldn’t believe it. We were glued to the TV the entire day. We went outside around 5:00 to sit in our driveway as we normally do to chat with the neighbors and it was eerie because there were no planes, and we always had planes flying over our house as we only live about 15 minutes from the airport. But then we heard a plane (of course this made us nervous), but then we saw two fighter jets by this plane, and we realized it was Air Force One. It was flying really low (we still don’t know why…below radar maybe?) and it was really neat to see that and know the President was up there.

The rest of the week was spent glued to the television, and then on Saturday, all of the guys were sitting outside bored (no football that weekend and all of the golf courses were filled up) so they decided to paint a flag on our court (cul-de-sac for those that don’t know what a court is). My husband is a college of Engineering graduate, so he had the whole thing perfectly scaled…50 stars and the 13 stripes. It was huge and awesome! I need to dig up pictures of it. The local news came out and interviewed my husband and took pictures. People didn’t drive on it forever! The poor trash guys the next couple weeks would drive their big trucks around the outside of it out of respect…I loved the way our country bonded together during that time.

Eventually, people started driving on the flag in the court, and TV shows returned, and people started forgetting what a horrific day that was. Every 9/11 I try to absorb as much as the media will give me remembering that time…I don’t want to forget. And I completely support our troops over there…you guys and girls are awesome and thank you for everything that you are doing for us…it’s not going un-noticed; at least by me anyway! I tried to explain to my 3 year-old last night why the buildings were on fire...I told her that some mean people ran planes into them, and she asked "why?"...all I could say is that they were very mean and wanted to hurt us.

The city came by to re-pave our neighborhood last spring, and they had to get the permission of every house on the court to pave over the flag (they said that we could re-paint it when they were done). We had every intention of painting it again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe someday…although since we’re moving, we probably won’t see it.

I say a little prayer for all of the families who lost loved ones whenever I think about September 11th; I couldn’t ever even come close to imagining how they feel.