Seven Years Later

I can't believe it's been seven years since 9/11. It feels like it was just yesterday but at the same time it feels like it's been so long ago. Maybe it's 9/10/01 that seems like a different era because it was.

I still remember hearing about it when my mom sent me an email at work. In Germany I was 6 hours ahead and getting ready to leave work in a little while when she sends me an email asking me if I had heard that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought it was a joke and wrote her back and told her that wasn't funny what was the rest of the joke. It was just something so unfathomable at the time. How could something like that happen at home? That's not the kind of thing that happens in America. We couldn't get on the news websites because everyone else in the world was trying to do the same thing at the same time so we heard what was happening from the Director's Secretary who was on the phone with her husband telling her what was going on. A play-by-play if you will. I'll never forget when she said the Twin Towers were no more. I could not put my head around that. I asked her what she meant by that but I did not believe it till I saw it. But right then I just wanted to be home, not my apartment home but American home. I wanted to be with my family. Instead I was in Germany 6 months pregnant with friends. My mom said I was probably safer overseas at the time anyway but I felt so isolated. I counted down the hours until my husband came back from the States where he was at school, and hoped and prayed that ll my family in New York was ok, especially my cousin who worked in the area and her husband, a New York Police. My husband called me at 2:00 am 9/12 to tell me that my mom finally got in touch with our family in New York and everyone was safe. What a relief.
When I got home and saw those horrific images for the first time I just sat on the floor and cried. I couldn't go to work for the next couple of days because the base was closed except for essential personnel so for the next two days I watched AFN News and cried and cried.
One of the things that scared me the most was bringing a child into this new world. I had no idea how things were going to change and if it was going to get worse, how different was life going to be. I felt so guilty bringing a child into such an uncertain time.
And now it's seven years later and I am so grateful that we have not seen anything has horrible as that day.

Today Sarah Palin spoke at her son's deployment ceremony. I caught a few clips of it on the news today and I must say that it made me emotional. You could hear the emotion in her voice and I really connected with her. I thought of the night that we had to meet up at the gym at 2 am to send my husband off and how emotional it is anytime you send a loved one off on a deployment. They are always emotional.

Here is a clip:



I pray that the whole unit comes back home safe.