Ten Years Ago

I know many people will have much to say, today.  It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since we watched the terrible and unthinkable play across our t.v. screens and our newspapers and our computer screens.

10 years ago, I was in my living room at our previous house.  K and I were getting ready to go to a playgroup.  Someone called me, I don't remember who exactly but possibly it was my mom or one of my sisters.  They told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and to turn on the t.v., so I did. 

I was 28 at the time.  My world had taken a monumental turn when I became a parent...that day, that morning, I think the entire universe shifted for many, many people. 

I have to admit, I have been trying not to turn on the t.v. very much this weekend; and even checking into my F.acebook page has been difficult, because of the near-constant remembrances and ceremonies going on.  This is not because I am unpatriotic, or cold-hearted, or unfeeling...far from it.

You see, we live about 10 minutes from a busy, 'international' airport.  We are in the landing/take-off paths for just about every plane that uses that airport.  Since we've lived in our current house, our route to take K to dance travels a road over which large passenger planes regularly take off and land just feet above our heads.  Even 10 years ago, in the previous house, we were still in the landing pattern and takeoff patterns for the airport.  I have always lived in this proximity to this airport.  The sound of plane engines is a constant.

As I told my husband earlier today, every day since that day - once the airlines restarted flights - I have never been able to watch a plane about to land or taking off overhead without thinking about 9/11, about those in NYC who watched a passenger jet slam not once but twice into the WTC towers, about those people on those planes who at some point realized they were about to die, about all the people that died that day.  Because of where we live, two of the planes used that day flew right over our heads, in that beautiful, sunny September sky.

As I said, the air traffic around here is constant.  We drive by the airport runways several times a week, almost every week.  Part of the environmental sound here, in my neighborhood, is the roar of jet engines.  Memorials of 9/11 have been a constant, for me.  Maybe I'm strange that way, thinking about 9/11 just because I drive by the airport as a jet engine roars and screams away 200 feet above me, I don't know. 

Whatever the events of 9/11 will come to mean as the future unrolls, I haven't forgotten them.  I never will.  It's just not possible, nor would I want to.

Later,
Jen