Remembering 9/11

Ten years ago today I was working out at our local wellness center.  Madison was in school.  Darcy was in the childcare room at the wellness center.  Tom was in Kentucky touring a prison for work.  I was on the elliptical watching the television monitors above my head where they televise NBC's Today Show, CNN, ESPN, and FOX News.  I don't remember which channel my headphones were tuned in to or if I was even listening to the TV, but I did see when the Today Show cut in with the breaking news about the first plane going into the World Trade Center's Tower 1.  I watched as it unfolded.  I tuned into the channel and began listening to Matt Lauer and Katie Couric tell the world what had happened.  Then I watched live as the the second plane went into Tower 2.  At some point I finished on the elliptical and moved to weights.  I always go to the bike next, but I don't remember doing that.  I remember being on a machine, sitting with the bar in my hand ready to pull down, my head turned to the televisions when the towers began falling, crumbling right before my eyes.

I got up and went into the childcare center to get my baby.  She was two.  I hugged her tight.  The TV in the room was turned to cartoons and the children in there were playing peacefully.  I asked the childcare woman if she knew what had happened.  She did.  I told her the towers had fallen and then I packed up my baby and I left.  I remember driving to get Madison.  The teachers had been informed.  I told the girls what had happened as I've always told them what was going on around them.  Darcy asked questions about bad men.  I hugged both my girls tighter. 

I drove to my friend, Krista's house.  Her husband, my Steelers buddy, was on an airplane heading to Italy to see family.  Krista had a four month old baby at home.  She and I spent the entire day and evening watching television.  I eventually heard from Tom who was in lock down in the prison.  She eventually heard from Scott who had landed in Italy.  We continued to sit and watch as President Bush, who was down the street in Sarasota, was informed as to what had happened.  We were glued to our seats, the three kids playing in the room next to us, the baby asleep in her little bed.

I remember how everyone around the country united.  How the next day American flags flew from houses everywhere I drove.  It took weeks for me to stop crying.  I saved the newspaper that came the next day so that my children would know what had happened years later.  I talked them through everything they were seeing and living.  I hugged them tighter and often.

I won't forget.  It is another part of history that I have lived through, another remembrance.  I am proud of how our country united.  I am proud of and thankful for our troops who selflessly get up every day and fight to protect us and who work hard so that this doesn't ever happen again.  I can't imagine what their families go through, but I am grateful as well to them even though I don't know them.  I am hopeful that we never will experience this kind of tragedy, horror, or terrorism again.  But I am also realistic and so I try to live my life each day to the best of my ability.  And I hug my children tighter and more often.