Reflections of September 11: Before and After

September 10, 2001, was an ordinary day.

That is one of the things I remember most.

The next morning started ordinarily, too. I had my youngest child with me at the daycare I ran. I normally didn’t leave the news on, but that morning I turned on the Today Show just to check the headlines, I think my mother in law might have called me and told me to look, I dont remember exactly I just remember changing it from Sesame Street.

Then a second plane hit the World Trade Center.

At first, I don’t think any of us understood what we were watching.

And suddenly, the world we knew was gone.

My older daughter was with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. They had taken her to a military base for a doctor’s appointment. On the drive once they learned what was happening we talked and they turned and came back. We didn’t know what was happening or whether the country was preparing for war. As it turned out, the base was closed anyway.

But I had grown up out east and had friends and family scattered along the East Coast. I worried about all the people I knew from my small state that made their way to NYC.

I was glued to the television, watching the attacks unfold and watching the reality of the evil behind them become clearer. Meanwhile, the children at my daycare were doing their normal activities, kept away from the television. I wanted to protect their innocence for as long as I could.

Inside, though, I was panicking.

I wanted my babies with me while the world was burning.

My mother helped track down the little family I had on the East Coast. My uncles were safe.

Then there was the gas station.

My mother-in-law had stopped for gas on the way home, as did my husband at the time and apparently anyone else with a car. The prices were suddenly insane. People were lined up around buildings, fueled by fear and uncertainty.

It was one more reminder that something enormous had happened.

For most of my life, America had felt separated from war by oceans. I’m from a Military extended family, my Uncles were both in the service, one had a whole life time career with them. My ex husband was ex military as was my then father in law.

We had wars. We had enemies. We sent our young men and women to fight in places far away. But somehow, in the deepest part of my mind, those things belonged somewhere else.

Not here.

Not our soil.

America felt untouchable.

September 11 shattered that illusion.

The fight between good and evil came to us.

And I think that is what changed me more than anything else.

It wasn’t only that thousands of people died. That part had my head spinning so hard trying to comprehend how that could happen but also came the realization that something could reach us. Something could get past us. The oceans that had always felt like a shield suddenly felt much thinner.

Even now, when conflict happens somewhere in the world, it feels closer. Bigger. Scarier.

Because we learned that we weren’t untouchable.

But I don’t want to remember September 11 only for what was lost.

There was goodness, too.

People ran toward danger. Strangers helped strangers. People donated blood, opened their homes, fed people they had never met, and searched for ways to help. When America’s airspace was grounded, thousands of passengers were stranded far from home. In places like Gander, Newfoundland, ordinary people opened their homes to complete strangers and made room for them.

For a little while, the things that usually divided us seemed very small.

We remembered that we were all human.

But that isn’t the part of September 11 I want to make the story about.

The story, for me, is the before and the after.

Before, I believed the worst things happened somewhere else.

After, I knew they could come to us.

Before, America felt untouchable.

After, I understood that something had gotten past us.

And yet, somehow, in the middle of all that darkness, people still chose kindness.

Maybe that is what September 11 ultimately left me with:

The darkness can reach us.

But so can the light.

I’m going through things and not here as much as I’d like, when I’m in a flare I just cant get my brain to still for long enough to write a post, but these words were stronger just pushing to get out. I hope you all are well and I’ll check in again soon. Til next time gang, take care of yourselves, and each other.