For The First Time

Everyone old enough to remember 9/11/01 has a story to tell. The tragic events that unfolded on that day reached out to us all in one way or another. For me, it started a series of “firsts” - beginning with the first time I knowingly and consciously uttered a four letter word in front of my children.   

I can recall Matt Lauer’s announcement that a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center as not making sense. Why would a plane be flying low enough in that area to strike a building? I’d never been to New York, but that didn’t seem right to me. Chicago is full of skyscrapers and in the probable hundreds of times I’ve been downtown, I couldn’t recall a low flying airplane. Ever.   

In hindsight, something in my gut knew this was no accident, but still having a September 10th mindset at the time, I accepted my conclusion of mechanical failure until a fireball erupted from the South Tower. I was so horrified, my self-censorship went out the window and without hesitation, I verbalized a word I would never have used in front of my children the day before. I’ll let you guess which word that was.   

My husband, a police officer, was about leave to start his shift. As a cop’s wife, I had learned to live with the general unease that comes with being married to a first responder. For the first time, I was terrified. New York was obviously under attack. Was Chicago next? I thought of the police and firefighters responding to the scene and realized how lucky I was to still have my man in blue standing in front of me, safe and unharmed.    

Shortly after the third plane hit the Pentagon, there was a knock at my door. My elderly neighbor had one child in the Trade Center and another in the Pentagon. He didn’t know what to do with himself, didn’t want to be alone and for the first time, I had no words. We sat in silence, watched the buildings drop and waited for his cell phone to ring. It did. Both of his children survived.  

For the first time, I heard Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” on a rock and roll radio station. It had never occurred to me before to go out and buy more American flags than the one I already owned, but when I heard that music, I felt the need to decorate everything I owned in red, white and blue. For the first time, every store was sold out of them.   

As more information became known and Al-Qaeda, terrorism and Osama bin Laden became a part of our every day language, I, for the first time, witnessed up close the emotional pain caused by hatred when another neighbor, an American who also happens to be a devout Muslim and wears a hijab, was spat on as she and her small child exited our local grocery store. Mortified by her story and the tears streaming down her cheeks, I could do nothing but apologize. Ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s dangerous. I’m still fearful for her to this day.   

A while later, I learned that, for the first time, I would have someone that I love very much deployed to a war zone. Another neighbor, who also happens to be my son’s godfather, was stationed in Iraq for what seemed like an eternity. I did what I could to be there for the wife and children he left behind when duty called. It doesn’t seem like enough of a “thank you” for sacrifices that they made. It never will. He’s our neighborhood hero.   

Ten years ago, in the midst of horror, countless heroes emerged. My thanks to everyone who wears a badge, firefighting gear or camouflage. You are heroes every day and far more brave than I can even imagine. As we remember all of the lives lost, also remember the American unity we all felt that day. It’s our differences that make us interesting. Be kind to each other.