Remembering 9/11/01

I am a couple days late but the memory is still there, probably will never leave. I have been reading blogs where people have been saying what they did when the Twin Towers fell and so I am prompted to write also. This is my generations John Kennedy/Martin Luther King Jr., where where you when you heard about....

I was getting in my car, taking my son to Lizzie's house. She watched Charlie before school til the bus came for him and her two daughters. Everyone usually rushing around in the before school madness. I turned on the car and heard on the radio, not standard KLOVE music, but news. They were saying something about an airplane into a building in NY, but I didn't catch it all, with my son getting in the car and everything. I made him hush as best I could and listened carefully to the news report on the 3 minute drive to Lizzie's house.

When I pulled into the driveway she rushed out to the car and I was rushing to go into the house to see the TV. Both of us, I am sure, had horrified looks on our face, terror, disbelief, awe even. As we watched the situation unfolding the reporters camera showed the 2nd plane hitting the 2nd tower. I just could not believe it. I wondered if similar things were happening in other cities. I live in California... what about Los Angeles, San Francisco.. even Sacramento where I work, what about there? I remember telling my son to watch the news closely that he was seeing history in the making.

I hated having to leave him and go on to work. I wanted to be able to sit at the TV for the entire day... I guess it is the sense of morbidity? Why do we do that, sit in front of the screen watching the bad shit happen across the world, and think "thank God it was not here" and also thinking "but what if...???" and "what can I do to help" ...

What do I tell my son about the events? You know what, even today I don't remember what I told him... Other than the truth. I have always been big on the truth. Plus what should I sugar coat, he had seen the news and the pictures of the devestation.

In some ways his slight Autism is a blessing, he does not feel emotions to the extent that I do, at least not for things of this magnitude. I think he knows, it but is able to compartmentalize it and move on? Death has never really bugged him. Ever. Not even with pets.

I did not see Charlie this year on 9/11. He was spending the day with his father, and I picked him up at 8pm, then he went home and straight to bed. I don't know if 9/11 was mentioned to him, or if so what he may have thought about it at this point. He was not in church to hear the great sermon delivered by Pastor Danny about forgiveness and how hard it is to forgive but that God says to do so 7x70 times.

That might be a great conversation for this evening on the ride home.

In His Loving Arms...