Some days will forever be replayed in your mind - there’s simply no need for video or blog entries. Pearl Harbor. The JFK Assassination. September 11, 2001. But sometimes, it’s good to share those memories. Sharing keeps your heart whole and strong.

I was meeting with a vendor who was trying to sell me some new software add-on that I didn’t need. My phone rang. I knew it was my home phone number, so I excused myself to the Sales Rep and picked up the phone.

It was Mr. Hot. “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.” He wasn’t panicked. I remember thinking that it must have been a small little plane. The kind that flew in and out of our local airstrip. Maybe a corporate jet. My response was typical of someone who isn’t really paying attention because of other nuisances going on. “Really? Wow. You’d think you wouldn’t miss something that big. Hey, let me call you back, I’ve got someone here. Love you, bye.”

I turned back to the vendor. My phone rang again in the time it took me to turn around and say, “Sorry, that was my husband telling me that a plane….geez. I’m just Miss Popular today.” I look at the number flashing. Home again. Uh-oh.

“Another plane. Hit the other tower. They’re saying on the news that they’re passenger jets, not little planes.” I looked at my visitor, and started repeating everything that Mr. Hot was telling me. “Huge holes in the building. Passenger jets. Hijacked. “ I told Mr. Hot to hold on, put the phone down, and simply said. “I don’t think we’re going to have time for the rest of this meeting. We’d better find a television.”

I remember Mr. Hot telling me when the North Tower fell. I remember my boss calling from Chicago, telling me to send everyone home. I remember no one leaving, because there was a television on the floor, and we all clustered around it.

I remember walking into the living room in our little condo. Mr. Hot was on the couch, tears in his eyes. Shortman was just ready to turn 10. I sat with my family, the three of us, the rest of the night. We watched George W. Bush (it was the last time I respected that man) and Rudy Guiliani. I remember calling an especially close friend from work. She was in Chicago, but lived on Long Island. “Are you okay? Is your family okay? Are you staying in Chicago? How are you getting back?”

Our building in Chicago was evacuated. We had an office in New York. As I watched the crawler at the bottom of the television screen, I saw my company’s name listed as having space in WTC.

We focus on the Towers, but must also remember Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - about 80 miles from where my mother grew up. And the Pentagon. Those people who were on Flights 11, 77, 175 and 93.

I remember driving, days later, home from one of Shortman’s soccer games. It was getting to be dusk, but not yet dark. His best friend’s mother was behind us, following us in her car. Mr. Hot and I were listening to the news. It seemed like we were always listening to the news. Up above, a plane was flying. The planes were back in the air. We looked at each other. We beeped and pointed, out the window at the plane.

Two weeks after September 11, 2001, I flew to Chicago. The mood on the American Airlines flight was solemn. We were wearing ribbons. The flight attendants were wearing ribbons. The pilots thanked us for flying American. They thanked us for remembering their fallen brothers.

It was a bad time in the United States. It was a good time in the United States. We were all Americans, and we had banded together.

—- “The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.” Henry David Thoreau —-

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