Remembering September 11th

Six years ago today I was still (barely) a mother to just two children. It was Jake's second week of kindergarten and Nate's first day of Preschool.

I had been looking forward to the little break I was getting with both kids being out of the house. I had no big plans, just wallowing about the house in my hugely pregnant state.

Just as I was driving home at around 9:00 am I turned on the radio and heard that an airplane had just plowed into one of the two towers.

I was stunned.

I couldn't imagine it, I kept thinking that it just could not be happening. It was a brilliant September day, planes only smack into buildings when it's foggy, like when a bomber got lost hit the Empire State.

I got home and turned on the TV and I learned the full horror of that day. When I heard the original flight plans of the planes my first thought was "They're loaded with fuel, those planes are bombs."

At some point I called my husband or he called me, I don't remember, and he told me that he was coming home. His office building at the time was a multi storied affair, on top of the hill and a government building. It was a ripe target. Since he wasn't a critical state employee, he was sent home. We spent the day glued to the set, only turning it off just before Jake came home from school (Nate was shortly picked up from preschool after the bus dropped Jake off). We decided to keep the TV off for the rest of the day until the boys were tucked in bed.

We didn't tell the boys anything until the next morning. It was too awful, too raw. I wanted to shelter them for as long as possible, but... in the end they had to know. Larry and I settled on telling them that some very bad men stole some planes and crashed them. Many people died or were hurt, but not everybody and some people were very brave and tried to stop them.

I remember how quite and empty the skies were the next few days. Then, when flights resumed, how jarring the sound of an airplane can be.

Nothing is the same since then, but life goes on. I still look up when planes go overhead and there is always a teeny tiny part of me that wonders.