After Which Nothing Was the Same

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was working in sales at BellSouth and had just popped my computer into the docking station at my desk and hit my radio's "on" button to listen to WSB AM 750 (and my boy, Boortz) when I heard the news. 

What? A plane? Like a BIG one, or a little one? Oh, most definitely a big one. 

We all ended up in the Vice President's office watching the news unfold on the TV in her conference room. Numb. Shell-shocked. Speechless. Quiet ... odd, still, deafening quiet. Who could possibly work on a day like today? 

The girls and I went to Jocks 'n Jills for lunch because we knew they'd have on every news network. We sat for 2 hours and ate in near silence - remarkable for our group. How could this happen? In America? This kind of stuff happens somewhere else. Not. Here. All I could think about was my 9-month old at the baby sitter's house and how I wanted, no needed, to get there to hold her. 

A fog. A fog that lasted for days and days and days. You'd blink, thinking that it was a dream and you could just blink, wake up and will it away. But no, it was real. Painfully, heart-wrenchingly real. 

After 09-11-01, nothing was the same. Never will be. To this day I cannot step foot on a commercial airliner - for business or pleasure - without thinking of those people who, on 9-11-01, were going about their business . . . like they did every day before and thought they'd do every day after. But it wasn't an ordinary day. It was a day that profoundly changed us all - affected us to the core of our beings. Forever. 

And I will never, ever, forget.........