Then and Now - 9/11

 

The picture above is from 2003.  I grabbed it today because it shows my 9/11 quilt in the background.  Every summer this quilt goes up on the wall.  While nobody in the house probably even thinks of the connection, that quilt will always remind me of 9/11.  Working on it in the months afterwards was very therapeutic for my jangled nerves. 

I remember the day it all happened, listening to the news reports in the car while I was driving the twins to preschool.  It was all surreal and unbelievable.  This morning I drove Jungle Boy down that same street as I took him to his classes at the community college.   He has no memory of the event.  We didn't have a television connected then (still don't) so my kids never saw that unrelenting news coverage.  They sang "God Bless America" around the flag at school a few years later on the anniversary, but never understood why.

Of course, they've studied it in school now, and have as much understanding as they do of any event in American history.  We've talked about it as a family, as we do many things, but for them it doesn't hold the weight that it does for those of us who do remember.

This is an event which separates our generations.  I was just a bit too young to remember the Kennedy assassination, which forever put me in a different category than those people who did remember it.

I hope that there will never be an event in their lifetimes that defines their generation in such a painful way.