September 11 - 7 years ago…

I guess my generation’s equivalent of “where where you when Kennedy was assasinated?” is where were you on September 11?

I was about 15 miles away, happily at work for Fairfax County Government.  A wall of my workspace was windows — it was a breathtakingly beautiful day.  The sky was blue. When it actually happened in NY — nobody could believe it.  When the second plane hit the Pentagon — we all went into crisis mode.

Children were staying put.  Parents were also told to stay put… very hard to do.  At the time I didn’t have children — but now as a mother — I can’t imagine being somewhere other than with my child during a major disaster.    A few people were stationed at the TV and they wrote out what they had learned on a flip chart that was posted outside the conference room.

By the time, I left… the traffic going back toward DC was sparse. I lived about 2 miles from the Pentagon and although I couldn’t smell the smoke at my house — I could from my friends’ houses.  It was jarring to see tanks in the street…

All we wanted to was help… there were so many people helping that not everyone could keep busy. Those of us without a job — prayed.  We all knew that the world was changed…  Although I often wonder how  it would have gone down differently if we had been able to harness that single moment of almost total unity to make progress… instead of start a war…