in remembrance

I remember waking up in a Baltimore hospital with my new baby boy beside me in an isolette. We had been through a long night waiting for admission for his severe jaundice. We finally made it to a room to begin treatment around 4 am and following that Dave and I took turns with fitful naps. We had awoken to Good Morning America and were watching the news when it all began. It seemed so surreal. Some of the hijackers lived in a hotel not that far from our neighborhood in Maryland. And then it got stranger when we attended an old friend's funeral in Annapolis. It was purely gut wrenching to think that such a earnestly good person was taken from this world. Ironically he considered his position there at the Pentagon one of the safer locations in his long military service.

What saddens me even more is the change in all our lives since that attack. There is no place safe from this mentality and yet I have to admit that moving away from the DC/Baltimore area has given me more peace on a daily basis. Of course our new town is not any more safe, but I do not have to daily face the guarding of high risk areas and other such realities.

Each anniversary of 9/11 brings more questions from the kids. Jordan wants to remember the details of who picked her up from school and why we were apart on 9/11. That only reminds me of how I was with one baby during 9/11 and away from my first born at the same moment. We could not leave the hospital because every interstate and road were closed in the area. Thank goodness my parents were there to help during those days.) It still pains me to think that only two weeks later Dave's mother would see William for the first time as she began her recovery from a massive stroke. William is now six and his birthday will always be connected to 9/11 in my mind. He and Jordan walked a mile at school today to commemorate the anniversary. Everyone wore patriotic colors and celebrated being an American. Life goes on, but for our generation it will never be the same.