Remembering this September

A decade has passed since that fateful September morning, and it feels like it just happened yesterday.  Most years I can’t watch the TV coverage, but this particular year I am a documentary junkie - watching a lot of the ones that have been broadcast on the History and Smithsonian channels. 

Like so many others I will never forget where I was that day and the weeks that followed.  I was living in Queens at the time and was working an auditing job at Seton Hall University.  I just happened to not be in Manhattan that day.  I had been listening to the radio on my drive to Seton Hall that morning and in the time between when I parked the car and walked into the building the first plane had hit.  I walked into the office and was immediately greeted by a co-worker with “did you hear what just happened?”  No work was to happen that day.  We all rushed upstairs to a student lounge and sat in front of the TV to watch the news.  Family & friends who thought I was in Manhattan tried frantically to get in touch with me but with the phone lines jammed it took quite a while for me to get through to people.  My husband and I were on a dating ‘break’ at the time, but he was still one of the first people I called when I got service back. After the towers fell we all decided it was time to try and make our way home.  The drive up the Turnpike is one I will never forget.  The sight and smell of lower Manhattan was just unbelievable.  It seemed like a dream - an awful dream.  All of the bridges and tunnels were closed so getting back to my apartment was out of the question.  I spent the next week at my mom’s until I could get home again.  As with our parents and their attachment to “where were you when Kennedy was shot?” my generation sadly has their own attachment to “where were you when the towers fell”.

I think about how when my son grows up all he will ever know is life post 9/11.  Everything I lived through he will read about in history books and see in pictures.  He’ll never know what life was like before terror alerts and homeland security.  It will all be normal to him.  In a way I sort of envy him for that.  Ignorance can be bliss.  He doesn’t know what life was like before 9/11 so he can’t miss it. 

Today we honor those who lost their lives on that Tuesday morning in September ten years ago and those who have helped fight for our country in the years since that day to help keep the rest of us safe.