Remembering

9-11.  The day my generation will remember exactly what they were doing.  Most of us planted in front of a TV, waiting for more news. Calling loved ones.  I slept through the whole thing.  It was a Tuesday, my late class day.  My roommate didn't have class until 11 either, so we slept.  By the time we woke up, everything was different. IM's telling K. what happened, people telling me in the hall.  Both of us thinking some one was playing a horrible joke or watching a bad movie.  It sounded like a Michael Bay plot to me.  Then it sunk in, my dorm neighbor's dad worked at the Pentagon.  She couldn't get a hold of her family because too many calls were flooding the lines.  He was okay, but the worry and panic-brought the East Coast troubles a little closer to home. Everything did seem so much farther away that day.  I thought of my cousin and my friend, who were both in the Army.  What was going to happen to them?
And now as 10 years have passed-the people I've met and the stories they told, brought everything even closer to me.  I was a nanny for a year for a couple who worked at the Pentagon when Rumsfeld was the SoD.  They introduced me to someone who should have been there on 9-11.  Possibly close to where the plane hit, but something kept him home.  Friends who were in New York that day, friends who were on a ship in the Pacific.  Everyone was so effected by this that no matter how far away you were from the actual crashes-you weren't really that far.  To the thousands who lost their lives, to the millions whose lives were affected--we will never forget you.  Namaste.