Where were you?

I remember growing up, hearing people talk about what they remember about the day Kennedy was shot, or MLK. I know what they are talking about. There is something keen in my memory about that day. I had dropped Nick off for his 90 minute intro to Montessori school, and was at my mother's house, around the corner, when the first plane hit. My sister in law & I watched in horror and disbelief, like everyone else. The beginning of this tragic event joining our nation was happening in what was actually my childhood bedroom, where a small TVsat on a high dresser.
I called my then husband to tell him. His response, was one of the nails in the coffin of our marriage.
 I retrieved Nick from the one room building that had remained unaware of the world events until panic in the eyes of the moms coming to scoop up their babies tipped the teachers off.
Alex was in first grade. At a school he had been at for little more than a week, where I knew almost no one. How grateful I was to the Principal, a man I came to know well and grow very fond of ,who showed me on that day his philosophy of children coming first. He refused to allow radios playing on the buses and sent a teacher on each bus to make sure parents were given the choice to explain what they needed to to their kids. I spent the rest of the daytime, in our unpacked home, alternating watching my little ones play outside and running in to stand in front of the TV with the various tradesmen who were "working" at the house that day. We stood there, with our hands over our mouths at the horror on the screen. With our brains, struggling to understand. My heart was aching for lives lost, for the loved ones, for our country, and for my children's future.
It was a beautiful day, I remember that. I remember wanting to preserve the innocence of my children's right to a beautiful September afternoon. We made a picnic on the front lawn when Alex got home and they watched bugs crawl across it. In the days and weeks that followed, the country singers filled up the airwaves with tribute songs, songs of patriotism and retribution. American strength and God's power. And I cried.

Not wanting to traumatize the children, I seldom exposed them to the atrocities on TV. It seemed like a 24 hour news reel for a while. Information did leak out, they knew something bad had happened, and I explained it as plainly as I could to them.
I remember one day a few weeks after the attacks, Alex walked into the kitchen and said to me" Hey Mom, if Osama Bin Laden thinks that dying is so great ( Alex, understandably, had a hard time getting his 6 year old brain around why the terrorists would choose a suicide mission) then why is he hiding from us?"

An excellent question I thought. and a day I will never forget.
God bless all who have been lost, their families and friends, our children and God bless America.

Where were you when the world stopped turning?