This year was the most normal I have ever felt on 9/11. I cried on the way to work, but didnt really think about it once I was teaching, and honestly, not a single one of my students asked about it.  I handled storytime and activities, a research project, finding band aids for small cuts and bruises normally and soon the day was over and I was out on the Greenway running.

            13 years ago, I was 19 years old. I was in the process of rushing, and I was in early morning classes, and I was busy almost all the time. That was during the time of my most successful yoga practice too. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got up early and ran from my apartment to the gym (it was about 1 mile). Once there I was running on the track, listening to a morning show, when it was interrupted in what I thought was a joke at first. There was someone talking about a plane crashing into the North Tower of the WTC. I thought it was the most awful prank I had ever heard. Then, at some point, I slowed down, and looked around me. I realized that no one else on the track was listening to what I was listening to. I stepped to the railing and looked down onto the basketball courts, where people were already playing. Everything seemed to be normal. But somehow, it wasnt.   The run from the gym back to my apartment was the fastest mile run I have ever clocked. It took me less than six minutes.  I remember unlocking the door and grabbing frantically for our remote, turning on the TV at exactly 9:03 a.m., in time to see Flight 175 fly into the South Tower. I will never forget that moment of realization that something truly terrible is happening.   I yelled for my roommates to wake up, to come in the living room, that something was happening. 

            We sat silent, watching, as the smoke poured out. I started crying when I realized that the falling things I was seeing were people leaping.  And then, amazing, we had to make the choice about whether or not to go to class. There wasnt anything about whether or not class had been cancelled. One of my roommates was desperately dialing a friend she knew lived in downtown Manhattan, crying that she couldnt get through. It was before they asked us to stop calling, before we knew that the phone lines were so overloaded they werent working.  I was unsure of what to do so I biked to school, and walked a few minutes late into a somber, silent  9:30 English class and sat down. A girl at the back was listening to her Walkman.  She continued listening even as our professor came in, a kind, middle aged man who made 18^th century literature as interesting as he could for 20 year olds. He asked if we had heard what happened and everyone nodded. He paused and then said, There havent been any official announcements from the University, so we will have our regular class today. He might have been about to say something else when the girl with the Walkman broke in.

            The Pentagon! A plane hit the Pentagon! Oh my God. She burst into tears and we stared. 

            What? I thought that was impossible. I said slowly, and then there was a growing murmur. I had watched a special on the Pentagon only a few weeks before, about how it was the most secure building in the world, about things that made it secure. 

            Im sorry. This was a mistake. I am officially canceling class. Please go and find who you need to find.   Our professor looked at us again, with what I would come to know as an expression of realization.  The realization that he had watched our innocence taken away at about 9:45 on a beautiful Tuesday morning.  We couldnt possibly know how our world would change after this.  But even as we left, as we walked out onto a somber quad, we knew that nothing would ever really be the same again.

            The days that followed were ones of sadness, and grief.  Watching the news was watching people holding up pictures of the missing, of firefighters digging through the rubble, of our President telling us that the United States would find who did this and punish them. We were so nave we believed it would be that easy.  People cancelled travel, cancelled weddings, even. Parents grieved just a little bit that their babies birth would be linked to a tragic event.  The next year we grieved even more. The year after did we grieve a little less? With each passing year, the memory becomes more of a memorial, a day in which I remember every detail of that morning, but also know that we no longer need to be sad during the day, that wonderful things can and do happen on September 11th. That it’s okay to fly somewhere, okay to complain about the cable bill or go shopping. 

            Now, it is a day we stop for a moment (or maybe several), but it is also a reminder that we move on. In the midst of tragedy we learned and grew (although how much can be debated) and our children dont know a different world. I can barely remember a world before September 11^th.   Babies are born, couples are wed, children go home to fight homework and play outside. In the back of our minds, we know that the day is a little quieter than most days, and we might tear up as we remember where we were on that day. But I know that each time the anniversary passes I am reminded of all the good that is still in our world, and that mindfulness, I hope, will lead the hard discussions I have coming with SL.  We will never forget.