Remembering

Where were you when…

I feel like that will always be a question that surrounds this day.

September 11, 2001

I was a college student. Having just transferred to Brigham Young University it was the beginning of the school year and I was still trying to find my footing. In my first class of the day the guy sitting next to me told me that two planes had hit the World Trade Center. While I knew that planes running into buildings couldn’t be a good thing I didn’t yet grasp what that really meant. And to be honest I’d never even heard of the World Trade Center, either. After that class I headed to the bookstore. The closer I got to it the more in slow motion the world around me seemed to become. When I walked into the bookstore and saw every TV screen turned to the news and saw everyone stopped and looking at those monitors that’s when I knew.

My hear sank.

My very first thought was very clear. My children are going to ask me about this someday. They will want to know where I was and what I was feeling when this happened.

My very next thought was also just as clear. I need to be home.

Throughout my life my dad had always taught/stressed the importance of our home. He would always tell us that our home was a place that we could be sheltered from the storms around us. It was a place we could make sense of our lives, of the world. It was a place that was always safe.

So in that moment that the world seemed to slow down I wanted to be home. My home, at that time, was not the home I grew up in, it was a little apartment I shared with three other girls. But for the time it was as close as I could get to home.

I stayed home a lot for the next few days (although I did leave the house to go to my classes) and I watched as much as the news as I could. Peter Jennings was the news anchor I seemed to watch the most. I heard as much as I could the stories of sadness and the stories of triumph. And I watched as they replayed the footage of the second plane flying into the second tower. And my heart continued to sink.

The day hasn’t come yet when my children ask me about the events of those days. Even so I’m trying to be ready. I hope I can impress upon them that even when bad things happen that good can come from it. That bad things sometimes gives us opportunities to be brave. That this country we live in is an amazing one.

But most of all, as I was reminded of that day, that their home will always be a safe place.