I don't usually watch the news.
In 2001, when my boys were 8, 6 and 2, I rarely saw the news or cared to see the news.
If something important was happening, someone would call me. And that's what happened on September 11th, eleven years ago. My nephew called me.
"Aunt Suzy, have you seen the news?
A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York!"
He and I decided that it must have just been a sadly misguided small-engine pilot.
Poor guy - really bad day for him!
I turned on the living room television in time to hear commentators exclaiming in disbelief.
With two sons home schooling and one still in diapers, it was a busy morning and I hustled them out of the room and off to their morning tasks, leaving the TV still playing.
In only a few minutes, I was standing back in front of the television watching in horror as the second plane hit and the crashes were declared not accidents, but attacks on America.
I declared it to be LEGO DAY, sending the children upstairs and away from the screen. I was so very grateful that my children were at home with me and not in a classroom down the street, too far away from my anxious arms.
The vulnerability that Americans rarely feel really sunk in when more planes fell in other parts of the United States.
I wondered what would happen next?
Would nearby cities be the next targets?
Would bombs drop?
I'm sure that my account of where I was when on September 11, 2001 is just like millions of others. But as I watched the ceremonies with My Youngest this morning, I watched it as the mother of an adult son. Listening to those mothers announce the names of their lost sons, still choked with grief after eleven years - it all hit me in a different way.
And the two year old, now thirteen, doesn't even remember any of it.
So as we watched, I told him everything again. It seems important to keep that story from slipping from memory.
I wish I knew what all of you were doing on this morning, eleven years ago and how you share that with your loved ones!
It was a day I'll never forget. I had the same fears. My son was off to college and a long way from me. It was crazy and very unsettling. It's hard to believe 11 years has passed.
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