Ten Years - A Note for My Girls

There are a lot of days I can remember vividly: swimming in Africa when I was tiny, the first day of first grade, celebrating Mother's day in 1995 and, of course, the day, exactly ten years ago, today.

For me the story of September 11, 2001, is also the story of how I should have been spending the day New York but ended up hanging out at my parents house, with your dad.

I had packed a bag with everything I'd need to spend a year in Spain and I was going to spend the year with my friend going to a college near Valencia. We had our plane tickets, passports, visas, packed bags and plane tickets to JFK airport for September 10th. On September 9th, we found out that our flight had been canceled and our tickets were sold to us through a fraudulent website (back in the early days of internet where many more things went wrong, one day I will tell you about all the ebay stuff I purchased that just never showed up either). Somehow either the flight didn't exist or our tickets weren't legitimate for a real flight, but we had to get new tickets right away so we could make it for the beginning of the (college) school year. We drove to CSUS and got new, student tickets (no internet tickets this time) and we returned to wait until our new flight, which left San Francisco, early on September 12th.

We spent Sept. 11, 2001 at my parents house (me, Shell & dad), and did what everyone else was doing - watching the tv, in disbelief and horror. We missed our flight the next day since all planes were grounded. We didn't make it on the next few flights either, those were all canceled as well. I ended up staying, finishing my two degrees in 4 years and forgoing a a third degree. Staying also meant I could pursue a relationship with the guy I loved.

Time has gone so quickly and so fast, and doesn't slow down now that we're chasing both of you around. It's a funny thing how life works, doesn't work and works out strangely all at the same time. Maybe one day we'll have a conversation about what really happened on that day and what it meant, and hopefully by the time we have the conversation there will be some progress and I'll be able to explain it more eloquently than I can right now.