I somehow missed hearing about the 1 of 2996 project, which is too bad. I wish I could have participated in it.
On September 11, 2001, Sophie was just three months old. Nate was two and a half, and Lex was nearly five. I was living with the three of them in a little two bedroom apartment, and John lived in the apartment complex next door.
My phone rang early that morning, but I didn’t get up to answer it. The machine came on, and I heard my step mom’s voice in my kitchen saying, "Wake up! Turn on your TV! New York City has been bombed, the White House has been bombed!"
I thought she meant that nuclear bombs were falling. I thought she meant the world was ending.
I left the kids sleeping and shakily went outside into the quiet early morning to John’s bedroom window. I knocked on it until he woke up, then I brought him to my apartment. I couldn’t even talk, really, I think I just told him that something really, really, bad had happened and we sat down and turned on the television.
How horrible and how awful this is to admit; my first response was relief.
I want so badly to believe that people are basically good. I have no concept of why the idea of power has such hold over people that they are willing to do anything to try to get it. Yesterday I was talking with one of my kids (Nate? Sophie?) and they asked out of the blue, "What does, ‘rule the world’ mean?"
(I think it was in reference to Plankton in the SpongeBob movie.)
"Well," I said, "some people think that they want to be totally in charge of everything and everyone on the whole entire planet."
"That’s stupid, Mom. It’s WAY, WAY too big!"
It is too big. But it’s also too small these days.
I remember September 10 of that year, too. We didn’t do much; just went to the park and sat in the shade. I nursed Sophie while the boys ran around playing. We met friends there, and someone took photos. I think about that day a lot. I miss that time. I worry that all the problems in the world are just too difficult to fix. I miss thinking that people are basically good.
This is the best post on this I’ve read today. It’s that simple, this simple.
This is going to sound so goofy, but Chloe was just five months old. I remember the day very well. You know in baby books how you have a place to write current events when your baby was born? I was blank. It was later that year when all the crazy stuff started happening. I kept thinking I should add this stuff and save newpaper stories.
That moring I was standing in my office building on the 12th floor getting a soda in the lunch room when I saw the news. Everyone was abit freaked out due to the fact that we were in a 20 story building. We all went to the safety of our homes soon after the news broke. Took me awhile to get comfortable again with the whole sky rise thing. All the fire drills we had after was so crazy and nerve racking, wondering will I be able to get down the stairs fast enough.
I think most people are basically good but the bad ones have better publicists.