"Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning On That September Day?"*

"You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy."
--Colin Powell


This morning, while blow drying my hair, I had the realization that roughly half of the children at the elementary school where I work were not born on September 11, 2001.

Strange how the day is such a distant memory, yet still a fresh shock.

I remember it clearly. I slept through my 8:00 class (oops), and Paul was visiting me at school. He came into my suite, which was a "no-no", but sat and turned on the TV. We both watched. It took a few minutes to understand that it was real, words like hijacking and terrorism were words for TV, not for CNN. Buildings bursting into flames and crumbling only happened in the movies. Lives lost in that quantity only happened in places foreign, not somewhere near and dear to our hearts.

The confusion, the devastation, and wondering what was next soon followed. Were there more to come? Were my cousins in Manhattan okay? My friends Jill and Steve had just been married, and were honeymooning in Canada, they could not get back. And Paul also was stuck in the U.S. for a while. I wanted to drive home to see my family. I needed to.


Three weeks after, I witnessed the devastation first hand as part of a crisis team in NYC. I was 21. I was assisting people wearing sandwich boards with posters of their loved ones as "missing". I saw the wall at Pier 94, plastered with the desperate pleas of family to find their loved one who worked on the 95th floor of Tower 1. I think by then, we all knew they weren't missing. But, we desperately just wanted them to be found, even one of them. Seeing that smoldering pit of debris, smelling the putrid smell, and seeing truck after truck of twisted metal being carried away was surreal. It reminded me of trying to eat a big bowl of spaghetti and barely making a dent no matter how many bites (or truckloads) you take. It looked like the scene of a third world country, but in metropolitan America. Even then, though, God was in it. Somewhere, I knew. For many, it was a day that faith was found. For even more, a day faith was shaken.


Those helpless feelings have mostly passed for many. We have all "adjusted" to higher levels of security, and are aware that the world is not such a safe place. Our found or shaken faith has evolved. War is ongoing. But, it certainly is a day that everyone who was old enough to know what was going on can remember where they were, what they did, and how they coped.

*From Alan Jackson's song Where Were You