He let us out of class early, so I got to walk home from my 8 a.m. physics lab after only 45 minutes.
It was one of those mornings where things just felt right -- lucky. The day started off so well. In the scorching hot Texas summer that was finally coming to an end, I was praying for a morning like that. It was so blue. So crisp. The walk back to my dorm from class took less than five minutes. That's what I loved most about that class -- it may have started earlier than I wanted, but it was RIGHTNEXT to my dorm, so it allowed me to wake up late, get there quick and get home in no time.
Five minutes. That's all it took to get back to my building. But the memory of that morning is so strong. The sky was bluer than I'd ever remember seeing it. It was the kind of morning that made you feel good about not just the day, but about your life. It's easy to be optimistic in the face of a morning so light, cheerful, peaceful. It was so peaceful.
I would have remembered that morning ten years later even if it hadn't been THAT morning.
But it was.
Leaving the beautiful sky behind me, I walked into my dorm, took an elevator to my floor and headed toward my room. Five minutes later, I had my key at the lock of my door when the girl who lived across from me stopped me and asked if I'd heard about New York.
No, I said. Quickly, and with more of a gossipy tone than with the weight of the event in her voice, she told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I rushed inside, turned on CNN and saw the smoke.
And that was it. Just like that, my childhood ended. Everything became before and after.
There were phone calls to my military ex-boyfriend's grandfather to see what he, a Navy veteran himself, thought would happen. "War," he said, simply.
There was the call to my dad to tell him the news. He'd been driving all morning and hadn't heard.
There was the feeling that this was all just a movie I was watching on screen. Some summer blockbuster even Hollywood wasn't jaded enough to write.
There was the moment when the next plane crashed -- something I missed because I was on the phone with someone, anyone, to talk to about this so I didn't have to share it alone in my room. Because I couldn't leave, for fear I'd miss them telling me who did it.
Like knowing the name would have made it better, somehow.
Now we know and now he's dead and it's not better. I feel like it gets worse each year because there are so many new people who don't know. Who weren't there. Who don't remember. Who won't ever GET IT.
How do I tell my kids when they're older? How do I steel myself for the time when it's just learning and history to them? Like Pearl Harbor was to me. That will never affect me the way it did the people who were there.
If I can't accurately explain to them the horror of 8:46 a.m., how can I explain just how perfect that September morning was at 8:45?
It was just so blue.
