Sep. 14, 2006 – Originally published by CNC, Inc.

Reaching Forward Through Time On Sept. 11

As I sit writing this column, it is Sept. 11, and I am reaching forward, in a sense, through time to you, as you are reading this on Sept. 14 or later. You have already had your Sept. 11 by now, and remembered that day in your heart your own way. Sept. 11 - the day we grew up. How will we remember this special date as we move forward together through time - especially if we were lucky enough to make it through that date without someone in our family dying on an airplane or in a building?

I did things I had never done before on Sept. 11; things I had only heard of other generations doing, although they did it a little differently - I stood in front of a TV for hours, watching the day unfold, where other generations stood in front of a radio, heads bent forward, listening. I called relatives and friends all day sometimes speaking to two at once thanks to call waiting, where other generations had to wait longer to hear a loved one's voice.

But the feelings were exactly the same - how bad is this going to get, if it is this bad all ready? What should I be doing to get ready - for what? And, who hates us...this much?

We have a new world now, thanks to Sept. 11. We are a highly polarized country, we are at war, we can't get on a plane without taking our shoes off and being searched and scanned, we are fine-tuned to "what will happen next." We did lose our innocence as a country that day, and we can still be greater than we've ever been, but we'll never be the same. My mother was stuck in Geneva, Switzerland, unable to return because no planes were flying in, and we waited anxiously to hear her voice each time we tried to get in touch with her, and suddenly, life had narrowed down from worrying about play dates and bills and household chores to just waiting to hear a loved one's voice, to make sure she was OK (Geneva was about the safest place you could be).

And we hadn't lost anyone - what was it like for those who did? What about those families who missed a loved one's last desperate words of love from a doomed airplane because they were in the shower or out running early errands? What about the wife who stayed on the line with her husband as he crouched on one of the top floors of the World Trade Center, both knowing he would never return? They had to fit a whole lifetime into a few minutes, before the floor dropped out from under him and he was lost to her forever. How do we keep a remembrance alive for him, and them, and so many others?

Probably by remembering a little all the time, and not just on September 11. We now kind of know what World War II veterans feel like as they try to relate the immediacy of their struggle and just how bad it was to generations that didn't have to live it themselves - to make them appreciate the sacrifice that so many died for, were scarred for, had shattered lives for. Have you tried to explain Sept. 11 to anyone from another country, or perhaps to a child who was too young to really remember it? It's that feeling of never being adequately able to tell the story of what happened to us all on that day of attack.

I was at a play date with a girlfriend, Sandy. As we watched the replay of the first tower being hit on a tiny TV at a gym in our town where we had gone for our sons' gymnastics lesson, Sandy looked at me, and with absolute clarity said, "We will never be the same again." I still wonder - how did she know that? One plane had hit at that point, and I assumed it was air traffic control gone awry. But Sandy knew better, somehow.

So, we try to keep remembering a little all the time, and not just on Sept. 11, just the ways other generations have before us. We appreciate more deeply our families, our kids, and our freedoms, even as those freedoms dwindle. And we never forget our feelings for strangers on that fateful day, and how we never were more unified, even as others from another land were trying to break us apart, partly by breaking our hearts - that's real terrorism.

So, thanks for letting me reach through time to you, as I begin my own Sept. 11, 2006. I hope it's a calm day, and I will try to keep this feeling a little bit all year long. For those who can't anymore.