Remembering

I was tying my shoes on our couch. This is easier then it sounds because I was about 32 weeks pregnant. It was a beautiful morning and I was heading out for a walk. We had moved to NJ in May and our house was now feeling like a home. Brad was in the midst of training to fly the KC-10. I was busy nesting in anticipation of the arrival of our first baby. It was September 11, 2001.

I had the Today show on. I can barely remember those days...when I could watch the news in the morning and not cartoons. I was finishing my laces when Matt Lauer suddenly seemed confused as their normal broadcast was interrupted by reports of the first plane hitting the WTC. I sat and watched. Stunned. I was frozen on our couch. The second plane hit. Horrified.

Brad called and told me not to leave the house. The base was on lock down and he couldn't come home. This all felt so close to home living in NJ at the time. There were people in our neighborhood who took the train into the city every day. Members of our church had family in NY.

I sat on that couch for the next 6 hours watching everything. The Pentagon being hit. The plane down in Pennsylvania. I was sitting in the midst of all of this holding my big belly and crying as I wondered what kind of world I would be bringing this baby into. As hard as I tried not to, I was thinking selfishly of the implications to our family as Brad was no longer in the safe haven of the Instructor Pilot world, but now flying air refuelers.

That truly feels like months ago in my life. Not 5 years ago!? Not 3 children ago. Now we're on different coasts. Now I feel so removed. It feels more like a news story now instead of a personal situation. Living in that proximity at the time made me more aware and sensitive to the extreme devastation 9/11 had caused. Both to our country, the city of NY, and the personal effect it was having on people. I remember our first trip into the city around Christmas. I can't forget the image of the walls of flyers in the subway with photo after photo of missing loved ones. The fence covered in signs, flowers, flags, personal items, uniforms etc. of those that were missing or confirmed dead. The whole in the ground. The I-Beams still standing in the shape of a cross. I remember feeling strange about taking photos...but this was a piece of history and I wanted Baileigh to know what was going on in our country when she was just a baby. I remember scrapebooking the page with her visit to Ground Zero. I thought about her looking at it some day when she is older, when she is learning about this page in history in school.

I realized this year that moving west and the business of life had made me forget. I watched a special on CBS last night that was all real footage filmed by a fireman's brother that happened to be at the station on 9/11 filming for other reasons. It wasn't one of those made for TV movies. It was real. All of it. Too real. And as I watched I realized that I had stopped thinking every day of all the women that were also pregnant when 9/11 occurred and brought babies into the world alone. I don't think that much about the images in the subway. I rarely think about the people whose lives were changed and are still living 9/11 every day. And yet I am alone for four months very much in part to the events that happened on 9/11. Will we start to remember less? Probably. Will we commemorate the tragedy every 5, 10, 15 years because that is more convenient and practical? Maybe. This type of anniversary is never one to anticipate, but I personally appreciate the opportunity to stop and reflect and remember...and frankly I think I should do it more then annually.