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Fast forward to five years ago…It was September 11, a Tuesday. I had just dropped LuLu at her special needs pre-k class and was returning home to prepare for meeting a client at their downtown office at 10 am. It was around 9 o’clock. The cell phone rang. “Happy Anniversary,” he said, “and have you listened to the news?” The rest of the day was a struggle to communicate. Phone lines were jammed, email was slow. It was impossible for me to reach my employee before she headed downtown for the meeting (in one of Atlanta’s tallest high rises.) So since she had already left, I went too, knowing it was likely we would not have our meeting. I arrived just as they were evacuating the building and sending everyone home. The gridlock to get home as the city shut down that morning was unbelievable.
Our only personal connection to potential tragedy on that day was my husband’s brother-in-law who has worked for years at the Pentagon. A retired admiral, he frequently went into the office anyway. Fortunately on that day he had decided not to go in. However, that fact we didn’t learn until well in the evening. Phone calls into the DC area were impossible for most of the day.
KayKay still, five years later, reminds me that she was one of the few children at her school not picked up early. When I arrived to get her, the place looked like a ghost town. It had never occurred to me to pick up the kids. But then I had no idea that the teachers would have allowed them (as 5th graders) to be aware of what was going on and to watch it on TV. What an interesting time we live in – where media brings us so much in real time, and the lines of reality and fantasy seem so blurred because of this immediate, in-depth coverage.
Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to realize that September 11…our special day…had forever been changed. It is with the greatest reverence for all those impacted by this tragedy that I say this, but frankly, I was miffed. It’s a bit like having Pearl Harbor Day as your birthday or being named Adolph! Now when people say, “when’s your anniversary?” they generally gasp at the reply. Like we had picked the wrong day!
But even in the midst of all this tragedy, there have been positives. The one positive I see from the vantage point of being a parent of a traumatized child is that trauma and its effects are taken much more seriously by Americans these days. PTSD has been thrust into the forefront and the effects of trauma on children is being examined more closely. Researchers are finding that cortisol and adrenaline – chemicals released in brains under stress, have significant impacts on developing brains. So trauma has more than a psychological response – it has a physical one as well. Here in our post-9/11 world, we are learning that.
In our post-9/11 world? In our household there will never be a post-9/11 world. September 11th will come every year, reminding us of the best day of our lives and one of the worst…all rolled up into a single date on the calendar.
Writer’s Note: Here’s a recent picture of our blended family – and one of my favorites – showing my hubby right where he usually is – in the middle of the kids!
