This I Believe

In the summer of 2001 I began writing a family history based on genealogical research that I had been conducting. I wrote about family remembrances of the past, defining moments big and small, the fabric of our lives that makes us what we are today. I believe that we are changed by the accumulation of experiences, by things we have not known or imagined until they happen. On September 10, 2001 none of us could have known or imagined what the next day held for us. The world changed on September 11. I work a block and a half west of the White House and I was there that day. I believe that it is worth briefly remembering not so much what happened but rather how that day affected us.

Like just about everywhere else in the nation, that particular mid-September Tuesday morning dawned crisp and clear–a near perfect morning. Everywhere you looked the landscape seemed as if it had been brought into extra-sharp focus. But in marked contrast to the beautiful weather death and grief incongruously rained down on New York City, Washington, DC and a field in rural Pennsylvania. I saw the black oily smear of smoke rising from the Pentagon just a few miles away, marring the beautiful morning sky. I often pause now on similar days and remember, “It happened on a day like this.”

The TV coverage ran continuously for weeks it seemed. It was too much to bear but we stared in morbid fascination, unable to turn away like rubber-neckers slowing at a bad accident. The ache and sting from the shock of that atrocity was just below the surface flaring up at the slightest poke. My emotions were on a hair-trigger for several weeks. Spotting a small American flag attached to the side-view mirror of a mail truck would immediately cause tears to well up in my eyes. A downtown church that I often pass was open to the public and I slipped inside and wept as the music washed over me.

Four years have passed since that day and although the idea of committing the history of my family to paper came to me before that horrific tragedy, the events of September 11 urged me more emphatically to carry out the task of recording who we are and what we did. While the world around us even today continues to rehash what happened on that day and other more current and disturbing events crash in around us, it is the smaller pleasures and memories that take on more importance. Sunday soccer games, Boy Scout camp outs, playing the dulcimer out on my screened-in porch, a family picnic in our side yard, sharing a glass of wine with my wife on a quiet afternoon, or any other seemingly mundane activity is now all the more enriching. Embrace your family and relish each individual second that you spend together because once time ticks past us it can never be regained.