9/11 started with me being frozen in time. I was born in the 1950’s so I was not around for the attack on Pearl Harbor. In spite of this I was old enough and close enough to hear the stories about it. My dad, like most dad’s had been in the war. He was a Navy man. Most of the dad’s I knew didn’t talk much about the war, they just wanted to get over it and move on. My cousin Dennis was only 4 months older than me and had been born on December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. Because of this it was something that we as a family talked about every year.
A close friend had met and married a beautiful
Hawaiian woman during the war and brought her into our family. They rented a
room from my grandmother and grew up with us as family. I didn’t realize until
much later that the reason they lived with my grandmother was because the woman
was very dark skinned and no one else would rent to them thinking she was
black. I was probably a teen before I understood that they were not really our
family. But to this day as far as we are all concerned, they are.
We all have our memories of September 11th
: as Franklin Roosevelt said in 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.”
On the evening of September 10th we had a big party for our daughter
Randee and her husband Keith. They were visiting from New Jersey and had wanted to see all of
their friends. Randee needed to get back to NJ the next morning because of
work, Keith was staying through the weekend because he had a gig on Saturday.
The next morning I got up early to say goodbye to my
daughter and Keith dropped Randee off at FLL around 6 am for her flight and
then he came home. By the time he got home, the first plane had hit the first
Tower and then the second. All we knew was that Randee was on a plane to NYC
and she was 6 months pregnant with our first grandchild.
Planes were being hijacked out of the air and at that
time we didn’t know how many and to where, but they were all cross country
flights, as was Randee's. To add even more anxiety, it had been announced that
the hijackers lived in Coral Springs,
Florida.
After several hours went by, all four planes had crashed and both towers had
fallen, we finally heard from her and she was fine.
For us the day ended well. Randee’s plane landed in Jacksonville and she was
bused back to FLL. After an incredibly long day, we could finally breathe a
sigh of relief. As with most Americans we just took one day at a time and
finally got back to our new normal.
Three years passed and Randee was pregnant with our
first granddaughter. She was due in the middle of September and as the date
approached I looked at her and said “this baby is coming on September 11th!”
She scoffed at me and turned away; at around 10:00 pm on September 10th
I got a call from Randee saying she was on her way to the hospital. By this
time she was living back in Florida. We all rushed to
the hospital and a few hours later on September 11, 2004, Miss Alexis Grace
entered our world and it’s never been the same since. A day that was so awful had
become a day to celebrate. Jeremiah 31:13 “I will turn their mourning
into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.”
For us September 11th is truly bitter
sweet. God had taken a day of horror and turned it into a day of joy. So today,
September 11th, 2016, we are going to visit our beautiful
grand-daughter and celebrate her 12th birthday. I thank God for our
joy but I still mourn for all those who were not as fortunate as we were.
We
now have four incredible grand-children and they are all smart, funny, and
talented as well as without any bias the most beautiful grand-children ever.
Not one of the children was born before September 11, 2001. They will never
know the fear and anxiety of that day, at least not the way we who experienced
it can still feel. This is to them what Pearl Harbor
was to me; a date on a calendar, a day they are told "will live in infamy". I
pray they and we never have to go through this again, I just wish I could be
sure.
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