I Will Never Forget

12 years ago today... at 8:45 a.m.

I was on the computer, checking e-mail.

The boys were at school.

Daughter was watching Sagwa on PBS. 

All of a sudden, the screen on the computer went black, and when it came back up, the screen briefly showed in all of its color, and then the screen actually looked as if it was melting.

One month before, we'd had a huge train crash and fire in the train tunnels under Baltimore. In the paper, the reports were that the crash had affected computers in New York, at the World Trade Center.

My first thought was of this phenomenon, and I wondered what horrible thing had happened.

Little did I know.

PBS didn't break into Sagwa to let us know.

I was listening to the Jack Diamond Morning Show on Mix 107.3.  I turned off the computer, and turned up the radio and I'll never forget Jack's very somber voice saying "There's a report out of New York that a plane has flown into the World Trade Center.  We don't have any other details at this time."

I was thinking it was a little private jet.  I couldn't imagine the horror that was unfolding right before me.

I kept the television on PBS for the benefit of my 4 year old.  I honestly did not want her seeing any visual images, and I was glued to the radio as the story unfolded.  After the second plane crashed into the towers, the Jack Diamond show turned over to the live news feed from ABC News.

And then, and airplane crashed into the Pentagon. 

Living in the immediate suburbs of Washington DC, can I tell you that we could feel the boom vibrating through the ground beneath our feet.

And I knew then that our world had changed forever.

I grabbed my daughter, and ran to the grocery store and bought a grocery cart full of staples.

Again, we kept the television off so that our young kids would not have those visual images burned into their heads.

When the boys came home from school, we took them out for a long walk, and talked about how much we loved each other.  We ate a wonderful dinner, read stories, and tucked them into bed.

I didn't see the actual footage of the crashes until that night. 

To this day, I am so glad that I didn't let the children see those images as they were happening.  My kids have since seen the videos, and all 3 of them have thanked me for waiting until they were older before they saw what happened that day.

Throughout it all, the one thing I remember is the beautiful, impossible blue of the sky that day.

And, even more haunting:  That morning, at 7 a.m., a huge shooting star was seen across the sky over Washington as the sun was rising.  It was bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, even with the sun rising into the sky.  There were a phenomenal number of phone calls to the police and radio stations that morning about the shooting star.

In remembrance, I have a few other random images I'd like to share:

The Budweiser Commercial that aired after 9/11.



And, pictures from my trip to the 9/11 site in New York this summer:

The fountain at the site of Tower 1.

Tower 2.  That funky looking glass building in the back is part of the 9/11 museum.

It was pouring down rain on the day we were there.
Appropriate for the site, I thought.
So many of us were crying, I think that those were teardrops on the names, not raindrops.