Patriot Day

September 11th, 2001.

I was at home in a two bedroom apartment in Rancho Santa Marguerita, California, with an almost two year old daughter and an almost two month old son. Steven was at work. The phone on the desk in the dining room rang, and it was my mother-in-law.

"You have to turn on the TV!" she said in a near panic. She told me that terrorists had flown an airplane into a building in New York, and she was terrified that the United States was going to declare war, and that two of Steven's siblings, who were in the army reserves at the time, were going to be called to active duty.

When I got off the phone, I did turn on the TV, just in time to watch a second airplane crash into the second World Trade Center tower, and for the entire building to collapse. I spent a lot of time that day watching TV, something that I almost never did at the time. (I still don't.) I held my babies close, and tried to explain to my daughter why I was crying.

As a child, I remember hearing that no one who was old enough to understand what was happening when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941 would ever forget where they were or what they were doing when they heard about it. I think the same thing could be said about September 11th, 2001.

Where were you and what were you doing when you heard about the terrorist attacks?

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