The Gift Exchange

I still remember what I was doing the day our World Trade Center was attacked. I had just walked through the doors of a local grocery store where I worked at the time, and all of the employees were gathered around the dozen TV’s we kept on display in the electronics section. All of the pictures were showing a scene of two towers and one had smoke billowing out of it. I quickly tried to figure out why everyone was watching a movie at 6:30 in the morning, and when a co-worker whispered that it was a live feed from New York City, it still didn’t register. “What?” I thought to myself. “This is really happening?” We watched the plane crash into the second tower, and we watched the towers fall. It was one of the most surreal days at work I had ever experienced in my life.

That day and for many days after, it was as if the whole U.S. was in a state of shock. I didn’t know that it would affect me on a personal level, or bring out any kind of patriotism in me but yes…there it was. I found out that I was definitely a proud citizen of the United States of America and that perhaps I had taken what that meant for granted. I looked at my husband who is a disabled veteran, in a whole new light as his disabilities came as a direct result of defending the very freedoms I took for granted. I began to notice my neighbors a little more, and got a little more interested in what was going on around me. Many people I knew seemed to live their lives on auto-pilot, almost as if there was nothing to be concerned with if it didn’t affect them directly. I saw 9-11 change that.

Today as I was getting ready for work with the TV playing in the background, I heard a young girls voice paying tribute to the father she lost on the plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. I thought to myself how sad it was that we remembered this tragedy only once a year, while so many others were living with its aftermath every single day of their lives. All day long there will be political overtones, military undertones and long speeches made as a silent ticker of names runs across the bottom of the screen on my television. They are the names of those who were lost or never found as a result of the attack on 9-11. And once again I will remember the exact moment when I first heard the news, as if it is frozen in time in my memory. Do you remember where you were or what you were doing on 9-11?

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