The snow was deeper and the mud was muddier than I expected on our walk yesterday. Still, we kept moving. What else is there to do in these strange days?

I remember where I was on 9/11/2001. You probably remember where you were, too.

I had a nine month old baby and was resting in bed with her. She was dozing; I was awake, but not quite ready to get up and start the day.  At this time in my life, if the baby was sleeping, I wasn’t moving unless I absolutely had to. I was listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition” on the clock radio next to the bed. I remember that Bob Edwards was the host, that it was still early in Utah where we lived.  Edwards was a seasoned newscaster, but his normally cool, professional demeanor disappeared as he reported the mind boggling facts about first one, then two, then three, then four commercial planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, then finally a field in Pennsylvania.

There are not a whole lot of events like this, ones that are etched into my memory, with the place and the time so clear. With 9/11, everything changed. All of a sudden, collectively we would think about the world in terms of  “Before 9/11” and  “After 9/11.” We could never again return to the innocence of September 10. And the funny thing was that on September 10, 2001, we didn’t know that we were innocent.  We didn’t know that our days of walking our loved ones to the airplane gate were numbered, or that we would soon be a nation at war again. Everything changed that fast.

The “Stay at Home” order that the California governor issued just over a week ago is still fresh for me. But I have a feeling that it will be an event that will rank up there with 9/11 in its significance. I think all of us will remember these days as a time when everything changed. Continue Reading…