What I Never want to Forget

I can still remember exactly what I was wearing that day. Mostly because I relate my clothes and shoes to memorable events. But I remember the exact skirt, jacket, blouse, shoes and purse.

I had a four and 1 ½ year old at home. The hubby and I were working opposite schedules. I worked during the day and he worked nights, but was up all day with the kids. I still don’t know how he did it.

The hubby, our girl on his shoulder and our boy in the Polo shirt with our neices and nephew close to this time

It was a beautiful morning. The kind of morning where you can’t imagine it being anything but beautiful anywhere else. I actually remember the sky being the most perfect color of blue.  I look at pictures taken on this day and notice a glimpse of perfect blue sky and it seems so odd.

 Work was a little quiet. So when the hubby called me, I happily answered only to hear him say- “Get to a TV NOW.”

We really didn’t have a TV at work that you would watch on a regular basis, but I knew there was a small one in the conference room that we sometimes showed videos on. I knew he was serious and I couldn’t get anything to come up on the internet. I could hear in the background his favorite TV program, Fox News very loudly and what seemed to be some chaos.

By the time I hung up, got the TV working in the conference room, several more of us had gotten similar phone calls from parents, husbands, wives, our clients.

We all gathered in the conference room at the same time and miraculously the phones stopped ringing from that point through the rest of the day.

When we turned on the TV it was the exact time that the second plane was hitting the second tower. We thought we were watching a re-play of the first hit. We all still thought that this poor plane was mis-directed somehow and was crashing through New York. Terrorists didn’t even cross our minds.

Within seconds we realized we had not just seen a re-play. We had seen real time horror.

It’s a blur from there. Our TV at home was on 24/7 for the next 7 days. We slept in front of it. We would periodically wake up and watch. When we finally did turn the TV off, the quiet bothered us so much and we felt so attached to all that was going on that we had to turn it back on again.  I felt like I was doing something wrong when I didn't have it on.

These are the things I remember. These are the things I never want to forget. I promised not to. Despite the devastation and shock, I never want to forget the sense of pride I felt to live in America, to have the President we had in that moment, to live in a country where men and women sacrificed themselves for our country, where firemen and police officers were only heroes, where people in a small town nowhere near the events stood outside waving flags at the cars as they drove past.

Sometime on day 2 or 3 we had little mini flags in the house – I have no idea where they came from, but my 4 and 1 year old took them outside to the porch and I watch as they stood there in their jammies and waved those flags at the cars as they drove by. I didn’t tell them to do this. Even more amazing, in the background was a rainbow.

Sometime on day 3 or 4 we noticed how quiet the sky was. I never noticed before that I was NOT noticing air traffic, I had become immune to it. But the lack of sound in the sky was deafening.

Sometime on day 4 or 5 there was a massive American Flag covering an entire wall at work. There was not one single house that I could see that did not have an American Flag waving. There was not one single car that did not have an American Flag print-out in their back window.

I miss those flags.

I miss the camaraderie we felt towards each other.

Years ago we watched a 9/11 documentary with our now three kids. One wasn’t even born and the other two really do not remember. Sometimes I wish they had been older. 9/11 made a difference in how I think and how I express my patriotism, but no amount of re-calling events can impress that upon them.

I do not want to forget EVER.