Reflections

"Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it."

- Tori Amos

10 years ago this country experienced a horror that it hasn't often seen.

I was in my first semester of college.  I remember my alarm clock going off, and hearing that one of the twin towers had been hit by a plane.  I didn't have a TV, so I immediately went to CNN's website.  It was jammed.  I couldn't get any information to load at all, so I went into the common room and turned on the television.  I watched, in horror, as the second tower was hit by the plane.  I was still watching when the towers fell, not believing what I was seeing.  I never imagined that in my lifetime we would ever witness such a terrifying act of violence. 

The campus shut down for two full days, some classes didn't meet at all for the rest of the week.  Many people left campus to go and be with family, some of us stayed.  People donated blood, did whatever they could think of to help.  Some people were lost, some scared.  The Muslim population on campus laid low, not knowing if they would be looked at differently now that this had occurred.

I remember talking to family, wishing that I had a way home.  It wouldn't have done anything to be home instead of at school.  I'd still be sitting around watching footage of the attack.  I would have been more comfortable, and possibly less afraid if I could have been with those who I loved.

The images are still burned vividly in my mind.  The pictures, the footage, the stories of survival that were printed in the magazines and newspapers.  The images of people jumping out of the building so they didn't have to burn.  The days that followed where they pulled out body after body, no one still alive.

Now I look at my children, ages 6 and 4, who weren't alive and have no idea what today signifies.  Much how my generation is about Pearl Harbor.  We know what happened, but we weren't there for the horror of the attack.  I know it is my job to teach them, to screen what they see, so they aren't traumatized by the images of people dying, but to make them understand the gravity of the event.

I will never forget.  I will never lose the looks of terror, despair, pain that people felt that day.  Like so many others, I will pray on this day for those who lost their lives, and for their families.