"... for those of us who lived through these events,
the only marker we’ll ever need is the tick of a clock
at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day".
President George W. Bush
Ok, so don’t jump the gun and tell me I have already blogged about this (because you are PARTIALLY correct). Ten years ago today changed everything about how a lot of us live our lives day to day. I am going to go out on a limb and say ESPECIALLY if you lived, live or have family that is in New York, Washington DC or Pennsylvania. Every time I go through security at an airport, board an airplane, see planes flying overhead, hear a loud crash, observe a person acting suspiciously (I could go on forever) I begin to feel that same panicky feeling that I did after watching the horrific events of September 11, 2001. Ten years ago today, I was an optimistic student attending college classes on a beautiful morning without a care in the world other than how far away my parking spot was on campus to my first class. Ten years ago today I heard the events through a local disk jockey's voice thinking it was a prank. Ten years ago today I watched as the towers crumbled and along with them all hope that our nation would ever really be “safe” again. Ten years ago I cried, held those I loved close and prayed that we would never live through such tragedy again. That was ten years ago. Since 9/11, I can’t even look at the numbers 9 and 11 in succession without getting chills and a lump forming in my throat. I, like many, never thought something like the attack on the Twin Towers could or would ever rattle the earth to its psychological core-but for many of us it did just that. For years after 9/11 I would occasionally visit Ground Zero and through it’s many different stages of reconstruction, not even be able to fathom what it could have been like on that day-I was merely 40 miles away and it felt like another universe. My first visit to Ground Zero was a cold dreary day. I saw hundreds of pictures of the victims, candles, teddy bears, ribbons tied to fences and every now and then I would stop to read the gut wrenching stories of how much their families loved and missed them and couldn’t help but cry. As I was wandering through the gloomy tribute I had mentioned to one of my family members that I wanted to buy an NYPD t-shirt...not a minute later I was approached by a police officer in uniform and asked if I wanted an NYPD t-shirt and of course I accepted his gift without a second thought. When I turned to thank him again for his generosity, he was nowhere to be seen-there was something eerily comforting about his presence and to this day I still have my suspicions about that encounter. Year after year I would sit through the hours upon hours of the tribute from Ground Zero where they read each of the victim’s name and I would cry along with everyone else my only comfort being that this year marked one more year we had to be thankful that nothing like that has happened again. I even visited the 9/11 museum with my class of 6th graders a few years back and walking next to bent beams and crushed fire trucks could not help but let the wave of emotions come over me once again.
Since that day ten years ago I met my wonderful husband who witnessed the attacks first hand. He was one of those people walking miles and miles covered in ash, unsure what he would find as he kept walking trying to get home that day. He doesn’t like to talk about it and rightfully so. The events he witnessed that day led him to change his life and devote his attention to serving his country, OUR country and with it have come some very sobering experiences on what that actually means nowadays. Since he set out on this path, it has taken us halfway across the world, away from friends, family and the life we grew up knowing. We have come to assimilate into a military type lifestyle where deployments are always on the horizon, time away from one another is a given and moving every 3 years is just about the only thing we have to be certain about.
So you ask why revisit these gloomy memories and terrifying visions? Of course I have a motive to all my madness and this time it is because I have once again been let down by some of the very people that are in place to protect our freedom and liberties. With 9/11 approaching I was perplexed when I flipped through our base’s newspaper The Coastline (Take a look: http://issuu.com/navstarota/docs/september_8__2011_coastline) and saw no reference to anything related to the topic. Pictured on the cover was a montage of a firefighter a crumbled tower and first responders with the title “A Time of Remembrance A Time to Prepare.” I read through the artical titles and came to the end and thought, surely I missed it! There MUST be a section that I passed over detailing how our American troops and civilians overseas were to pay tribute to the fallen....I saw how to prepare for a tornado and hurricane, a travel section of the town just beyond the base’s gates, and “Good News! Magic American Diner Now Open Noon to Midnight.” In disbelief I looked through the paper cover to cover a few times and then my blood began to boil.
