Blissfully asleep is where I was at 5:46 am west coast time. Being the mother of three 18-month olds and having Paul home meant I was getting to sleep in. But he was waking me up, WHY WAS HE WAKING ME UP!!! Turning on the TV in the bedroom, why? I'm still sleeping, why? He is saying a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. What? I was thinking, "what a horrible accident." I'm watching a plane fly toward the building "How do they have a film of it?" "They don't. This is a second plane. Oh my God, this is a SECOND plane." Then.......
this isn't an accident!
Babies are crying somewhere in the house. Someone is hungry. Our day has to go on like usual, like it normally does. Bottles and diapers, crying and naps, baths and meals and the pure exhaustion that goes along with all of that doesn't seem so bad today. I get to do all of that. Over the next days and weeks watching the news non-stop is heartbreaking. The mothers, children, wives.......all of the "never agains".
There is another realization also. If we lived on the east coast instead of the west, I could have been one of those wives. My children could have been those children. My husband after all is a firefighter. It wouldn't have mattered that he was home that morning. He would've gone. He would have wanted to, needed to be there with his brothers. I can't imagine all of those wives knowing their husbands were there and then watching the towers come down. At that point I suppose they wished their husbands were cowards rather than heroes
I remember thinking, "I'm glad my parents are already gone from this world", so they didn't have to know the amount of hate that was out there.
I think our world is getting back to something more normal than it was. We aren't quite so afraid of everything. But then something as simple as a power outage brings back the fear. People were wondering if the power going out all over San Diego on September 8th was some type of terrorist attack.
I don't mind being cautious. I don't mind taking off my shoes at the airport or being scanned.
I mind that my children don't get to grow up with the careless innocence that I did.
