Reply #: It was my husband's 45th birthday

[latebloomer]

a gorgeous blue-sky late summer day, and we joked that he should play hooky that day. I dropped the kids at school, got back in the car, and turned on the radio-- the attack had happened 5 minutes before. I drove to a nearby lookout at the edge of a park, where you can see the whole skyline. The park was crowded with people, radios blasting, everyone staring at the smoking towers 12 miles east. I wandered around the park, in a daze of shock and adrenaline, trying to call people on my cellphone. Then the word spread that the Pentagon had been hit-- a strange woman started screaming and crying, "What's going on? Why? Why?" and we embraced, filled with fear and confusion. I turned back to stare at the towers and one of them was gone.

Met up with the husband-- he had gotten his day off, after all- and snatched the kids from school. The kids had not been informed of the events, but when my fourth grader looked at my face, he asked, "Did Daddy die?" We brought them home-- my thought was that we would all be together in case the next attack was nuclear.

Shopping that afternoon for flowers for my husband, everyone in the supermarket seemed so kind and there was a sense of unity. The horror of what had happened gave me a sense of how precious every moment was with the ones I love. But coupled with this for me was a sense of dread that we had this horrid little fuhrer at the helm and that the consequences of all this would be much, much graver. And that intense sense that the world had changed forever, and the thought, "What a terrifying world I have brought my innocent children into!"