Year 11: My annual tribute to 9/11/2001.

 

 

 

So here we are again, another September 11th, another year removed from the worst day this country has been through.  It was my generation's Kennedy Assasination, my generation's Pearl Harbor day.

 

It was so very long ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday, to add in yet another cliche'.

 

This year it has been much more subdued.  It's hard to believe that something like 9/11 would become so removed that our days become ordinary afterward, but in some cases this was just another day much like that day started.  I find it curious that we use that term to describe tragic events because when you look to the high and low points, do they not start as a day like any other day?

 

The day man landed and walked on the moon, started like any other.  In my lifetime, 8 presidents were elected and inaugurated, those too began as just another day.  The Shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their astronauts died on day that began like any other.  It's a mystifying statement, but it does indeed put focus on the ordinary becoming extrordianry in a days time.

 

 

 

 

Another thing I've been resisting is the tendnecy to measure the events of my life in two parts.  It was said during the coverage of the disaster that life will eventually be measured like that, but the immediacy of the event blotted it out.  Not much crosses that line in terms of major events in my life, except maybe getting married, then separated and my son being born before the attack, then our divorce becoming final afterward.  That's pretty much it.

 

You'd think my only serious brush with my demise, being the infection, illness and amputation of my foot would be the landmark I'd be measuring my time by in this equation, and in may ways I do, but really, innocence was lost on 9/11 and it changed so many things that were routine in life before that day.  I remember, for example, when a person could take someone to the airport and, if he or she desired, could escort that person pratically to their seat on the aircraft if they wanted to.  You can't do that anymore.  Indeed, you can't spend any length of time beyond five minutes in any airport now, even if you wanted to.

 

But this isn't the place to complain about how less free we are after that day in 2001.  It's not a time to be political.  It's a day to remember, reflect, and be an American family.

 

 

REMEMBER 9-11-2001