Your, My, Our 9/11

A beautiful thing about the human experience is that we all get our one story to tell. Our lives are an endless series of our own stories, how we saw things happen, what we were witness too. A year ago, I was sitting in a group therapy class in graduate school. That day, we were learning about Critical Incident Stress Management. As an exercise, our professor sat all 50 of us in a circle and asked us to talk about where we were when 9/11 happened. Over the course of the next 1 and 1/2 hours, we all got to tell our story. Where we were, what we felt, what 9/11 meant to us. Out of all 50 people, none of our stories were ever exactly the same, but it was incredible to find common threads throughout our stories: loneliness, hopelessness, fear, a new appreciation of life. For the first time I realized I was among some peers who were too young to even really remember how they felt, because they were in elementary school.

Elissa updated her status this morning and it broke my heart. Her sweet, and very smart daughter Sophia is still in elementary school.

I've always known that there will be a point in life where Ben and I will have to explain to our kids what 9/11 was. But I always assumed it would be after they read about it in history class or some similar setting. I forgot that children don't live in a vacuum. I forgot that 9/11 is something Ben and I talk about every year, not only on the anniversary, but when we go to the airport, when we talk about high school, when there are "high alert" days and I pray him through his day in his high rise building in downtown LA. 9/11 permeates so many aspects of our lives, sometimes I forget how influential it is, and how young Charlotte will be when I have to tell her (in an age appropriate way) what happened. And that's the day when she will start to form her own 9/11 story. May we never, ever forget the innumerable sacrifices of that day.  

I was a high school freshmen. I woke up, walked into the living room and saw my granny watching TV in the living room. I remember she was watching the news, but I didn't think anything of it. I went to school, and heard other students talking about New York, but it wasn't until my bible teacher turned on the TV so we could watch the news that I realized what had happened. By that time, both towers had already been hit and there were rumors of more to hit large cities. Our teachers couldn't function all day. Every class had us glued to the TV and the latest updates. But the thing I remember most about that day was that at around 11:30, my parents showed up at the school. Nicole and I were called out of class to meet them at the office. They wanted to know if we were okay, if we wanted to come home. It was at this point that I truly realized that something horrific had happened, and the feeling settled in my bones. If my parents were worried enough to leave work to check on us, nothing short of a disaster had happened. In this way, all of our stories are the same, because life wasn't the same after that. I don't get on a plane without remembering, I don't take the bullet elevator up to Ben's office without remembering, and on the anniversary, I can't help but look at Austyn (who was 11 months on 9/11/01) and realize how recent it all seems, but how long it's actually been.