10 Years

It is hard for me to believe that it has been 10 years. I remember everything so clearly. We had just moved into our townhouse in Burke. I was working on my schoolwork that morning when my brother turned on the TV. That was an unusual occurrence. My mom made a rule that we could not have the TV on if our sibling was on the computer working on schoolwork. I wasn't really paying attention until he called to my mom to come down to the basement. "A plane hit the World Trade Center." He said calmly.

My mom sat down to see what the reporters were saying and as she did we watched the second plane hit the towers. We couldn't believe it. She said it was a terrorist attack. I immediately freaked out and started crying. She calmed me down and soon after we got a phone call from my aunt who was in a panic. "Is Mike ok?" she asked frantically. We didn't know why until seconds later when the report came that the Pentagon was hit as well. My mom let her know that my dad was not in the Pentagon since he was in Arizona at the time. As soon as she was off the phone with my aunt, my mom called my Grandma Stacey to let her know that her son was ok. My grandma was never an emotional woman. My dad told me once that he had only seen her cry once. She cried when she found out her youngest son was ok.

We sat and watched the news all day. We watched the towers fall and brave men and women try and save lives. I can't even begin to imagine how the people in New York felt. It was all so surreal and scary and I was hundreds of miles away from them. I was not hundreds of miles away from the Pentagon. I went outside and saw a faint plume of smoke. I don't know if it was from the Pentagon or not, but I knew that my perception of safety here would never be the same.

I am so grateful to the men and women who risk their lives every day to protect this country. I wish that it did not have to come at so high a cost. I wish that there was a way to ease the pain of those who lost loved ones on that awful day. I wish that people would be quicker to remember instead of being so quick to forget. September 11, 2001 changed our country forever. Let us always remember what happened on that day, but not dwell on it. Let us learn from it and come together as a nation. On that day, a woman in France said, "Today we are all American." Politics, party lines, differing opinions. Let us set them aside and feel the way that french woman felt. Today we are all American. Don't ever forget that.