What I Remember...

Today is full of remembrances for so many people. I wanted to take a minute or two and jot down the things I remembrer about Sept 11, 2001.

Where was I that morning?

I had taken my daughter and dropped her off at school, she was in the first grade. I had errands to run and bills to pay that day and I drove my son to my sister-in-laws house. Shelly and Matt were going to watch William while I went to do the things that needed doing.

When I got to their house in Rogers AR, they were watching the news, Matt told me about a plane crashing into a building in New York, and I remember thinking how strange that was. I sat down to watch the news with them, which at this point was showing live coverage. Shortly after, we watched as the second plane hit the second tower. We were all stunned and we immediately knew what it meant. No accident, no coincidence. It was deliberate. Throughout that aweful midmorning we watched as the terrible scenes unfolded. We heard the news reports of the people jumping from the buildings and we discussed how bad it had to be up there for those people to jump. We prayed for them and their families and when the towers came down we prayed that most of the people inside made it out.

More reports started coming in about other planes that were missing, then found, striking the Pentagon and the news of United 93.

It was all so heart breaking to see the families of our country going through this.

When the news had played out I had to go run my errands, but before I could do that I had to stop and get gas as my car was showing empty. When I got to the gas station there were tons of people there filling up their tanks, I couldn't understand why people were acting this way, but I had to get gas so I waited my turn. As I waited gas prices started going up. I guess there was some sort of panick going on, why people would correlate terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to a gas shortage I'll never know. (Later I talked to my Mom and she said nothing like that happened where she lived. But it was a strange day.) Anyway, after I got my gas I went on my way and saw the same thing happening at all the other gas stations as well. Some stations were running out after having raised their prices to an inexcusable level. I knew my husband had gone to work with about the same amount of gas I had that morning so I called him to let him know that people were acting weird and he better go get some gas before he wasn't able to make it home that night.

He worked for a large construction company at the time and they shut their jobsite down because deisel gas prices had gone so high they weren't going to pay it. They didn't get to work for the next 3 days.  After that there was an uproar about the gas price gouging that went on.

That week we set candles out on our sidewalk each night in remembrance of those who were lost.

One thing that I remember vividly about that time was the sense of togetherness as a country.

I remember how you couldn't look anywhere without seeing the Red, White, And Blue. Flags were on cars, shirts, and windows. Flags were hung on every flag pole everyday. I thought it was sad that something so horrible had to remind people that we are all part of a country we are proud of. And that it took the events of 9/11 to bring us all closer together.

Other than the 4th of July, when was the last time you saw the flag displayed so proudly?

I made this graphic quite a while ago, it is always in my sidebar and is distributed freely for anyone who wants to use it for any purpose.

I thought I would share it again today...

God bless those affected by 9/11.

Always remembered.