That September Day

10 years ago today, I was at work. I was mom with young kids, just trying to make ends meet and survive. Danny was driving a truck for the same company and had come in and asked if I had heard that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.  All I could picture was one of those small recreational air crafts. I didn't think much more about it until people started pouring out of the office, letting everyone know that another plane had hit and they thought we were being attacked.  We all piled into our bosses small office with a TV, and watched news coverage. I could not even comprehend that anyone would do that on purpose.

Work continued, and with the radio on we heard about the towers collapsing, and the Pentagon and Shanksville. I remember if felt like the world was ending, and all I wanted to do was leave and go get my babies and go home.

Danny and I spent evenings and every lunch hour watching news coverage for about 2 weeks. As a mom I wondered just what kind of world I had brought my boys into.  It was very quiet at my house, and I could feel something shifting.  Within just a few weeks there was a navel recruiter sitting in my living room and a husband re-enlisting. Danny, a veteran, comes from a strong military family, and he was pissed.

My boys were young. Jacob kind of remembers the news coverage, but Tristen was only a year old. This year at school, they watched coverage of it in class, and it has really bothered Tristen. He is, in a way, just like we were the day it happened..asking hard questions, and wanting to know exactly what terrorists are and why would they be angry at America.

I will never forget that day or the days that followed. The flags, the tears, the uniforms...  Earlier today a friend that I graduated with posted this in his reflections of that day: 
We weren't Republican or Democrat, Texan, or Californian, white or black...we were AMERICANS. How quickly we forget, and yet remember all at the same time...