Sunday thoughts

Eva and I stayed home sick today.

I recorded and then watched the program with Tom Brokaw that showed the coverage of memorial ceremonies in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.

On this day, 10 years after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, I thought I remembered it pretty vividly.


Then I re-watched the coverage that I watched live, of the planes hitting the towers, and the towers collapsing; of people screaming and running, the clouds of dust, the firefighters.

Oh. Now I really remember. The shock. The horror.

So many people died–some because they just went to work. Some because they were first responders. Some because they were heroes.

Then, I had a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. Now, I have a 16-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 2-year-old. So much has changed in those ten years. In some ways it feels as though nothing is the same.

Then, the country was so united. Now, not so much.

I watched children and other loved ones of those who died that day speak of their love, their determination to make their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives proud.

I am grateful for people who would sacrifice everything, even their lives, to help others. I am grateful for the freedoms we enjoy, and all those who serve us to preserve those freedoms. I am grateful for my knowledge that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us, for our Savior and his sacrifice for us, for the plan that ensures that loved ones will be reunited again; for my knowledge that when we trust in the Lord, nothing can ever go permanently wrong.

where were you?

All day, I've been remembering this day seven years ago.

I was teaching early-morning piano lessons, I used to have some students who would come before school. My phone was ringing off the hook. I couldn't imagine who would be calling me so insistently at that time of day.

When I finished with my lessons, I sent my last student upstairs to wait for his mom, and I checked my messages. It was my s-i-l Michelle, telling me to turn on the tv.

I walked upstairs, and my student was already watching it, live. I sank down onto the couch next to him and we just sat together in stunned silence. It didn't seem real -- I was in shock, I guess. So hard to believe that something that terrible was happening in America, to America.

That student moved away and I haven't seen him in years, but today his face and his voice were before me, inexorably tied with the memories of September 11, 2001. Is that strange?

Max commented to me tonight that the History channel had been broadcasting programs about 9/11 all day. I asked him if he remembered it -- he was only 6 at the time. He said he remembered seeing in on TV a lot, and a broadcast from the governor of Utah that they saw at school, but he didn't remember being really frightened.

I remember. I was frightened.

So where were you?