Has it really been 5 years?

I started this post nearly a week ago. I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and finish it until now.

Five years ago, on 9/11, I spent much of my morning staring in disbelief at the TV and crying. I held 6 month old Kaylee close to me and tried to reassure 2.5 year old Keithen that we were safe, even though something bad had happened.

I remember feeling fear in my gut when I took the children out in public the first few times after the attacks. Keithen and I were enrolled in a "mommy and me" type class at the parks department. There was a strange silence at the start of our next class. All the adults agreed that we felt we had to get out of the house and go on with our lives, making things as normal as we could for our children. But it felt strange, like we were going through the motions of what normal life was supposed to be.....unsure what the "new normal" would become.

I remember one day we were walking into the Children's Museum and heard a plane overhead on approach to the airport. Nearly everyone outside the museum froze in their tracks and looked up at the low flying plane. Watching a low-flying plane pass overhead has never been the same for me since 9/11.

Thankfully, Ruby is young and innocent enough to occasionally remind me of the childhood joy and fascination with such things. A couple of week ago at soccer practice a plane flew overhead as the kids were doing their warm-up lap. Imagine about a dozen 3 year olds stopping in their tracks all at once and turning their prescious faces towards the sky. Those are the kind of moments where I see the hope for our future.

http://www.purdue.edu/dp/911/