This whole weekend us as Americans have been focused on the “anniversary” of the brutal attacks on us via the Twin Towers. I wish there were a better word to use than “anniversary” because usually that word is associated with a happy celebration and this is as far from a happy celebration than anyone could ever get.
i remember exactly what I was doing on that now infamous morning…It feels like it happened yesterday. I was in the car with my now ex-husband, he was dropping me off at my then Job at ADP, and it was about 6:30am here in CA. We had the radio on and we’d heard that a plane had ‘crashed” into one of the Twin Towers. Both of us had no idea the ramifications of that news. We both simply thought some “idiot” with a private plane either ignored the readings on their instrument panel or that it was some stunt gone awry.
I walked in my office and saw Cherie, a girl I worked with, huddled over the phone at her desk sobbing uncontrollably. This was a women who NEVER showed her feelings, let alone sob at work. As the day wore on we found out more and more information. One tower, then another, then the failed attempt on the pentagon. We were all in shock….being attacked on American soil..
Though none of us lived through it ourselves, we’d read of Pearl Harbor, and that’s what most of us thought: It’s Pearl Harbor all over again. I was lucky. I didn’t personally know anyone who was lost on that tragic day, but so many people around me were not so lucky. People lost friends, relatives and other loved ones.
As Americans we lost, in my opinion what made us different from so many other nations. At the risk of sounding cliche, we lost our innocence. No longer would we ever be as trusting or as open as we had been prior to those attacks. We, as a country had been violated like a woman who has been raped, and survives her attack. No matter how much time passes we will never get back that “openess” we once had.
I could go on and on about my feelings over that day and what we as a country lost, but I won’t. Instead, I want today to be the day I commemorate how proud I was to be an American in the aftermath of that brutal and vicious attack. We as a country, from coast to coast, big cities and small towns all across the nation pulled together as one big family. I can say in all sincerity that I was never prouder to be an American as during the days and months that followed the attacks on our American soil.
I want to thank all the firemen, policemen, health workers, and countless volunteers who risked their own lives to help people they had never met. While at this point the word “hero” has been used over possibly to the point of becoming close to “meaningless” it is only because there really is no other word in our English vocabulary to truly describe the lasting efforts of those self-less men and women who sacrificed themselves on that bleak day in our history.