I remember

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I guess I was lucky that day. I was in a little "bubble" that was the baby room at the day school I worked at. We had no access to TV or radio. Just a bunch of baby and lullaby CDs. I played with and loved on those babies ("my" babies) that morning just like any other. I didn't watch all the horror that was to come that day as it unfolded.

It wasn't until a mom came in late to drop off her daughter and said that two planes had hit the World Trade Centers. At that point, that was all she knew. None of us had any idea what that meant. Was it a freak accident? Was something wrong with these planes or air traffic control? It was just so weird.

A little bit later, someone came in and told us the rest. The towers fell...the pentagon on fire....a plane in a field. What was happening? I needed to get in front of a TV. And I needed to talk to Sweet Hubby. I was worried because we lived in a town with a major college. What if colleges were next? But I was a bit thankful that Sweet Hubby worked where he did because he was in and out of all sorts of small towns all day long. I tried to feel safe and secure.

And I hugged those babies. Oh, how I hugged those babies. The day was just like any other for them...they ate, they laughed, they slept, they played. They trusted us to keep them safe. They couldn't have any idea. I just wanted to wrap them all up in bundles and go hide somewhere until their mamas could come and hug them and protect them.

Then I went home. I listened to the local country station on the way home. It was no longer playing any music. It was just a constant feed from a news station. I kept thinking that this had to be some kind of awful nightmare or prank. This couldn't really be happening. Then for the first time that day, sometime around 3pm, I sat in front of a TV. It was all so sickeningly real. I couldn't even wrap my mind around it.

The rest is a blur. I don't remember Sweet Hubby coming home or eating dinner. I do remember Sweet Hubby coming to get me at some point in the middle of the night telling me to turn the TV off and come to bed. I couldn't pull myself away from it. Like a bad car accident, as they say.

One year later, I sat in church praying. For the victims, for their families, for the government, for the safety of everyone else, and for my unborn child. I rubbed my belly and thought of our baby that would be born in 4 more months and I wondered how in the world was I going to protect him from the kind of atrocities that happened just a year before? How would I explain that to him when he got to be 5, 6, 10 and we were honoring the anniversary of the attacks? Thankfully, he's not quite 4 today. He's still in a world where the worst that can happen is a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. And he still thinks that Dad is a hero that can fix anything. One day I hope to do justice to the truths of 9/11 for my children. About the horror that some people can bring on their fellow man. About the hope of a nation coming together...not shaken at the scariest time in our generation. About how for every zealot that is willing to fly a plane into a building, there is another person praying, giving blood, sending supplies, donating money, walking in to fiery and falling buildings to save one more life. That there is hope beyond trials. And that we can't ever forget. We can't let it become a line in a history textbook. If we forget and move past 9/11/01 then we forget what we are really capable of. We forget about true hope and heroism. We forget about what it means to be one nation under God.

We just can't forget.

So I remember.