REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11TH

There are a few days in your lifetime that you remember forever, in great detail.  Where you were, who you were with, and how you felt.

For me, that first huge memory was Nov. 22, 1963, when Kennedy was shot.  My firstborn was one month old, and I can remember the sun shining in our apartment window in Evanston, Illinois. My husband was at work in downtown Chicago.  I know I was wearing a black sweater, and my son had on a little white sleeper.   For about an hour, I simply sat and listened and watched, too stunned to move.  Suddenly, the stay-at-home moms  came out of their apartments and onto the sidewalk, and finally gathered in my apartment because it was the largest and could hold the most people.  And we talked and watched TV,  and no one had any thing to eat or drink for hours.

On 9/11, it was a different story.  My husband was able to take walks then, and he had a radio plugged into his ear.   It was a warm , sunny day and we were both wearing sleeveless shirts.   He heard it right away, of course, but when he told me what had happened, I thought at first it was a hoax, or he was mistaken.  Even then, we had no idea how extensive the damage, or how many people had been killed.  Finally, we passed a house where a young man whom we had never met came out from his doorway, and asked us if we had heard what happened.  So it was true.  We shook our heads, and mutely turned away, too stunned to reply.

Looking back, it seems strange that we were at war, but war was never declared (how did that differ from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?)  and life went on pretty much the same for those who lived far from New York & DC.