2001 was not turning out to be my year. I mean, the supreme court decided to hijack the election of president of the united states. Not that Al Gore had me dancing in the aisles, but hey, I could at least respect him. He didn’t have several years of time that he refused to account for in his life, but I digress. It really seemed shot to you know what the morning of September 11, when I just happened to be up early in the morning checking my email. Everyone was frantically searching for New Yorkers. Family and friends were running around making sure that everyone was accounted for, and for the most part breathing a brief sigh of relief followed by a long breath of sorrow for those lost in the towers, the pentagon and in Pennsylvania.
My second son was only one year old. My oldest son was four, and I basically kept the television off as much as I could. I have two children who were born after 9/11, and sometimes I wonder how many things really changed as a result of what happened. Most of the time, with the exception of the families of those directly affected, the airline industry (which, let’s face it, wasn’t the hotness when this all went down), and those who still can’t get decent health care as a result of breathing that “safe” air while working at ground zero, I am hard pressed to find any application of the lessons learned on that day (Katrina, anyone?), and that, to me, is almost as great a tragedy as the initial loss of life.
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