Remembering Sept. 11th

Everybody who wasn't of a wee little age can remember that day. The morning we all where going about our business as normal and when the first plane hit, thinking what the hell, a huge plane just ran into a building, who couldn't see a building in front of them. When the second tower was hit, every one's thoughts turned to the worst and within time the whole country was glued to our televisions, phone lines where completely jammed because all were calling on friends and family, nobody wanting to be alone while watching the horrors unfold on tv in almost a surreal way.

That day was full of emotions. Fear, for not knowing what was going to happen next and was it truly over, fear of did we know someone who was going through the horrific pictures we where seeing on tv. We were angry, as we had a good reason to be, we are America, we are known as being safe from outside fanatics. We had a strong feeling of sympathy, patriotism and love. We didn't need to know someone involved yet more prayers went up that day than I'm sure go up on Easter and Christmas combined. At that point in our lives, we put our differences aside and we where all family, a part of the American family.

Now, if you where a military family at the time, a combination of all those feelings and emotions where all blended together with a whole lot of other emotional ingredients. I at the time was living off base housing but our apartment complex was full of other military families from many a different branches.

My husband was active duty Navy and was at the base on his ship, going about his daily whatever it was he was doing, looking really good in his uniform while doing it. Other wives husbands where at bases too and we about came out of our skin each time the phone would ring praying it was our husbands, because being military and now having been informed by CNN that this was indeed a series of terroristic acts toward our country...our minds knew that there would have to be reckoning for what was being done to our country. Battles where inevitable.

I was so overjoyed whenever one of my friends would tell me her husband called, we cried, not because of anything the husband said, but just because of the over joy that comes from picking up the phone and hearing the voice of your loved one at a time of such unknowing.

I never got such a phone call. As I'm glued to the tv watching the world as we know it change forever a news flash came on announcing that ships where being prepared to deploy to NYC. My heart sunk. My husbands ship could go, they where no longer in the shipyard and his ship was a gator...a big ole ship who not only had sailors also hauled 3000 + Marines. Visions of my husbands ship pulling anchor and heading North flashed at a rate that I didn't know my mind could conjure up that fast. I cuddled our 1 yr old son and prayed for the best but prepared for the worst.

Day turned into evening and it was getting late, but that night I can't remember the time, I don't recall ever looking at the clock that day, my husband did come home. His ship wasn't one of them going. He walked in with a look I've never seen before and was a different man. It wasn't just him, the events of that day, changed our men. Friends became families. Our sailors and soldier's knew that the time of them being a peacetime military was dwindling, and where emotionally preparing themselves as where us wives knowing there was a whole different future for us when the word deployment was uttered.

We have survived. Our lives like we knew back then have forever been changed, but like our forefather and mothers, we adapt and overcome. But, we will never forget! As is should be, we need to remember the fallen, remember the heroes and remember our love for one another and our country.

Hug one another. May God bless you, your family and the USA.