In Order to Honor

Today will, of course, be full of college football for me and I will blog at length later about what looks like an epically bad week for me.

But that is sport and inconsequential when compared to what will weigh on the minds of many this weekend. The tenth anniversary of "Today Our Nation Saw Evil" (as the headline recalled) is upon us and it seemed more appropriate given the importance of the day to have a voice here of someone who has a story to tell.

My husband, Randy, will be the guest blogger tomorrow and will share with you what it was like to be an air traffic controller on duty that morning. He will be able to give an insider's view into how a thing that had never been done--a complete US ground-stop of all aircraft--was accomplished.

And I think that's the thing I most remember about the days that followed: No airplanes. There were the F-16s roaring through their turns over our mountains in order to draw their constant circles above NORAD, but in between their passovers it was eerily quiet: the sky didn't wink aluminum glints at us through the sunlight, it didn't groan with a far away hunger, it just sat there empty and blue.

The joyous pretend people were gone and we couldn't look up to notice the contrail and wonder if someone was bound for a vacation on a Mexican beach or to a long-awaited retirement in Hawaii, headed to visit a much missed college student in the Arizona desert or going to some life-affirming job interview in LA. The things moving through the sky were no longer about happiness but watchfulness and we knew exactly why there were there.

I hope you will find your own special way to pay tribute to all those touched by that day whether the effect was felt ten years ago or will occur ten years from now. So many ripples from that stagnant pond of fear and hate and pain. But where there was stagnation, water now flows freely beneath the rising shadow of One World Trade Center or The Freedom Tower. Two lovely waterfall/reflection pools fill those two voids and honor the names of all who perished on that day whether in New York, Washington, or Pennsylvania. The flag stirs with the breezes outside the Pentagon. And in a forest-surrounded field in Shanksville, birds sing and grass grows.

Nature reminds us that time marches on, the sun and moon come up and go down, and the days and years flow like those Ground Zero waterfalls. We do not stand still, frozen in a moment, but we do stand quietly letting our hearts go to all those who hurt and our minds wander over all the special moments, all the memories-to-be that one too crisp, too pretty fall morning suddenly made impossible.

So tomorrow we pause, and in doing so we will likely recall many things that have lain dormant for a decade. We will be shown video, will hear audio, will read accounts that may set off our own flood of mental imagery from our own personal 9/11. May we all find a restorative way in which to observe, honor, and remember.