"Where Were You?"

This is the question of the day, am I right? We have children who have no recollection of the events of 9-11 and the question is being asked almost everywhere.

This is the same question I remember asking my parents when I was in high school, studying the assassination of President Kennedy. Both of them told me exactly where they were, what they were wearing, how they felt, and the reactions of those people around them. I never dreamed I'd have a day like that in my lifetime.

I lived on Long Island for a little bit in 1990. I made friends there. I met firemen and police officers there. So, my reaction was a bit different from other people who lived in my small Michigan town. 

I was actually still in bed when the radio kicked on to tell us that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. I thought "What a sick fucking joke! This is cruel and ridiculous!" However, I got up and turned on the Today show...after all, Katie Couric wasn't going to lie to me. As I tuned in, the second plane hit and my heart broke. Did I have people I knew and cared about in those towers? I didn't know, but these were my fellow men and women. These people were someone's children, parents, siblings, significant others, and the world became so much smaller to me. I woke up my ex-husband who reluctantly got up and came into the living room to watch the world fall apart. We stayed glued to the television all day long except for when we had to walk the dogs. The disbelief of this tragedy flooded my mind.

We lived on a pretty busy highway, but everything went silent. There was no traffic. The night sky, usually alight with planes, was completely dark except for the stars. It was eerie how silent everything became. We pulled our mattress into the living room and slept on the floor in front of the television that was on 24 hours a day. Life as we knew it was changing and changing fast. 

As I look back on the events of 9-11 and the weeks that followed, hearing the stories of survivors and family members reminded me that love still exists in this world. My favorite line from Love Actually makes reference to this: 

So, I guess that is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I may have been living in a small town in Michigan, watching the news and praying for the people I knew and cared about and even those I'd never met. But it was the way the humans on this planet came together in love and compassion that will remain ingrained in my memory. In this day and age, those are two things that are in extremely short supply.