On the morning of 9/11, I arrived at my fitness center to work out, my toddler twins in tow. As I walked in the door, peopled were gathered around the televisions. The first tower had already been struck.
My first thought is that a small plane must have gotten lost because I knew large passenger jets weren’t allowed in New York City airspace. Then the second plane struck and we all knew it was a terrorist attack. I stayed watching until the towers fell. And then I couldn’t watch any longer.
It wasn’t just that this was a horrific event, though it certainly was. It wasn’t just that the 21st Century had just come into being amid chaos and death. It wasn’t that we were under terrorist attack and didn’t know what might happen next.
It was that I knew exactly how the relatives of the people killed in those towers felt to have their loved ones ripped without warning from their lives.
If you’ve ever experienced that kind of loss, you know what I mean. It’s an ordinary day, certainly nothing to signal what’s going to happen next, then the world changes.
