Remember When?

Note: I wrote this a few years ago and while its nothing extraordinary, I decided I'd put it up anyway. Even if no one ever reads this blog, I want to document the serious things that have happened in my life and during my lifetime, not only the joyful, happy times.

We've been watching a movie about the World Trade Center recently. The movie started with the planning and construction of the buildings, moved on to the man who tight-rope walked between them, and ended with the attacks on September 11th, 2001. As we watched the planes hit and people jump out the windows, we started talking about where we were and what we were doing on that day.

Elizabeth remembers playing with Aaron and thinking "wow, we're watching tv in the morning!" (We almost never watch tv on a school morning.) I remember hearing the tv from upstairs and coming down to see what was going on. Like most people, I didn't understand what was going on and those that were already watching were to stunned to stop and explain more then just "a plane hit the building." I remember most people thinking along the lines of 'what could have happened to the pilot? This can't possible be an sort of terrorist attack.'

Then the second plane hit and we know that this wasn't just some sort of freak accident.

I remember the reporters discussing and interviewing then suddenly switching to exclamations of disbelief and horror "the second tower has been hit! The second tower has been hit!" By this point we had called Dad at work and filled him in on the details. Unfortunately he didn't get to see any of it until he got home from work, but the pictures and videos didn't stop replaying for weeks.

In less then two hours, the Pentagon was hit, a fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and both towers crashed to the ground. Over 2,974 people died instantly, and many more injured.

***

We eat lunch outside on that beautiful September day with Grandma and were unable to believe how much America had been changed in one morning. I remember we kept saying what a beautiful, beautiful day it was. The air was so crisp and the sky was the very definition of "sky blue". Although we knew people in New York city at the time, no one we know died and so we were sitting there without our lives changing in the blink of an eye, like the lives of so many other Americans had. But our lives really did change that day.

Even all these years later, its so hard to believe that the root of the attacks was jealousy. Jealousy the our country is so prosperous. Jealousy of our freedoms and way of life. Jealously that we choose our leaders and homes and churches for ourselves. Jealousy that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.