We will never forget...

Another September 11th, and another feeling of loss, and sadness. I remember the strange, shocking day 11 years ago. I remember the unbelievable live image of the towers falling. I remember calling my dad, who couldn't comprehend what I meant by "The Tower just collapsed!" I remember acknowledging the secretary when I got to work, both of us teary and unable to talk--we just nodded, as if to say, "I know. It hurts." 

I remember the silence afterwards, as all the airplanes were ordered out of the sky--I never realized how loud planes are, until I couldn't hear them at all for days on end. I remember my sweet, oblivious little niece Nathalie, who turned 3 the next day, and how we all pretended to laugh and enjoy her birthday pizza dinner because nobody could describe the intense pain we really felt; nobody could describe the profound loss we'd suffered as a nation the day before. Explain it to a three-year-old? Heck, we couldn't even understand it ourselves.

It's been very strange contemplating and reliving all this again, so many years later. And this year, especially, feels like I'm opening a wound again, because it's the first year that Mark understands, really, what happened that day. He always knew about it generally, but only in a comic-book kinda way--there were bad guys who attacked us, and killed lots of good guys. (I always kept it very vague, because he was a little boy and I didn't want to scare him.)

But this year was different in that it wasn't just anonymous good guys, or generic, faceless bad guys. We watched a TV special about the firemen and police officers who rushed in to help, and talked about the heroes in Pennsylvania who crashed their own plane to sacrifice themselves, and save countless others. 

For the first time, Mark really grasped what happened, and how big it all really was. He saw how random life is--how you can just go to work one day, like you always do, or get on a plane, and that's it. He finally pieced together the words he'd heard about before--World Trade Center, terrorists, planes, Osama bin Laden--and he saw how they were all connected (and he realized why, exactly, my mom and I were so moved and emotional when we visited the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon this spring). It hit him kinda hard.

It was sad to see him go through all that, and to lose a bit of my innocent, trusting, baby boy.  But it was also kinda cool to see him grasp and process it, and to see how it affected him. Mark learned the world isn't full of random bad guys (like storm troopers in Star Wars) but very specific bad guys, and he understood why it was such a big deal that the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden. 

But more importantly, Mark learned the world is also full of heroes--police officers, firemen, all of the troops that serve and protect us each and every day. His respect for all of them grew, and he just...got it. Sure, life is random and bad things happen--but he also learned how amazing it is that when good people respond, step up, and help, without expecting anything in return. It was a lesson that no matter how big the bad, there is always a bigger good to counteract it.

I'm glad I was there to talk Mark through it all, and more importantly, I'm glad his new kitten Fernando was there as well. Because even with all my explanations and reassurances, it was a big, heavy, sad story. The kind that sticks with you, especially if you're just a 12-year-old kid. So I was glad that afterwards, when Mark went off to bed, he had a sweet, loving, fuzzy little kitten to take to bed with him, to remind him of the good things in life, and to comfort him while he fitfully drifted off to sleep.

I could have used a sweet, loving kitten myself.