Six Years Ago

I decided on a peaceful image for an unsettling day.

Six years ago, I was watching the Today show, as I did every morning. My sister called after the first plane hit, not because of it, but because she had lost her high powered job. We shared those first moments after the World Trade Center attacks. I was glued to the TV. I remember my kids, who were only 2 and 3, getting up late, changing them on the bed and having the TV on. How long was it before I realized they, too, were staring at the planes flying into the buildings over and over again in TV reality? 10, 15 minutes? On such impressionable minds!

We went shoe shopping, because that's what we had planned to do that day. The shop was right along the train line and we watched commuter train after commuter train packed to the gills bringing people home from downtown Chicago. The skies were eerily quiet, the trains eerily busy.

For days I would set the kids - only two of them then - up for lunch in front of a video and go to the other TV to catch the latest news. I didn't sleep well. The sound of the firefighters and rescue workers alarms ringing after they had been killed when the towers fell wouldn't leave my head. It was a constant high pitched whine. Weeks later I stopped watching TV news all together. I still don't watch it. I can't stand the images in my head.

I remember talking to the kids about 9-11, telling them that the planes only flew into the buildings once, not over and over again like instant replay on the TV. I remember trying to tell them that they were safe while not entirely believing it myself. I don't know if they felt unsafe, probably they just felt unsure because we were so unsure.

For a time after 9-11, I actually contemplated putting them in school. I took them regularly to a Mom's Morning Out program at a local church. Then Buddy started acting out, hovering over other children as if to bite (he never actually bit)and eventually striking out at a caregiver. That brought me to my senses and I brought them back home.

Six years is such a long time ago, we didn't even have a digital camera back then. We didn't have Little Man back then. And I didn't have any grey hairs...