I was not here when 9/11 happened.
I was living overseas, in a country where life went on much the same as before.
When I first heard the news, I was in a meeting and a friend called and told me in a mix of languages that planes had crashed into two tall buildings in New York. I thought she was mistaken, that the news hadn't gotten it right.
We had no television, so the images I saw were still photos that looked like the old movies with pie pans on string for UFOs.
It wasn't until December 2001 that I was back in the states and saw real video of the planes crashing into the towers. Unreal. That was the word that stuck in my head.
So now, living in the USA, I feel like the truth of what happened that day is hitting me for the first time.
I am figuring out how to tell my child who is old enough to know, even though he wasn't yet born that day. How do you say that something worse than a nightmare actually happened? How do you make him feel safe and secure while telling of such horrors?
For my memorial service, I will be baking a pan of brownies for our local firefighters. In some way it is a remembrance and a prayer as I grieve.
When I found out, I was hundreds of miles away at college while the rest of my family was in NY. My parents were supposed to celebrate their 25th anniversary that top of the Twin Towers that evening. I was really upset, and I was even more upset when I felt like our Christian University barely did anything about it. It was as if it being hundreds of miles away lessened the blow to everyone there, and they didn't consider that there were people on campus who knew people who were missing (myself included). It was a sad for me on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteWhat a good idea! I wish I had thought of something like that. One of my daughters is struggling with fears since realizing such a terrible thing could and did happen, and since finding out that there are people who would happily destroy us. I think taking part in an activity like baking the brownies would have helped her shift the focus subtly to what was in her power to do.
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