9-11, A Clear Sky
Taken from my Flickr photos, one year ago today
Everyone has a story about September 11th, no matter where you were at the time. I was fortunate not to have a friend or family member to worry about, but it tore me up to watch the news that morning. I remember the firemen rushing in, the look of shock everyone wore on the streets … and I hit my knees in front of my TV and sobbed when those buildings fell. So many people who didn’t have time to make it out … I worried about the people I didn’t know who were seeing this with fear beating in their chests and wondering, “Did he (she) get out?” I couldn’t bear it.
My Little One had just started preschool. I couldn’t stand not being near her, so I drove to pick her up way too early. I wasn’t the only one. We Moms and Dads stood with our fingers curled through the chain link fence watching our children laugh and run together in the playground, thankful that we still had whole, complete families. We all cried silently, and our kids had never been more beautiful.
And then I drove to the elementary school to get my little Tall One. It was lunch time, but the sign out sheet was pages long. The reasons listed were all things like, “I just had to have him with me” or “I needed to hug her.” I hope someone kept those pages.
We stood in the driveway when we got home and I pointed at the sky. There were no planes. By this time they’d all been grounded, and no planes flew for days. I told the kids to remember this, that there wouldn’t be a day again when they would be able to look at the sky and not find a plane.
When I see planes now, I feel a certain kind of comfort. We DO go on. We don’t forget, but we rebuild and we go on.
I wanted today’s picture to be a clear sky, because I remember.
October 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I was on vacation at Virginia Beach with my parents on that day. I think the oddest thing about that day was the complete absence of planes over the beach. Since it’s so close to the naval air field, Dad always took out binoculars to watch the planes. The binoculars stayed in their case that day as we watched the ocean.