I'm Beginning to Miss It

I'm beginning to miss it. Actually, I've lost it some time ago. It comes and goes but as time passes, it mostly has faded. Over the last ten years, it has wandered away, and sometimes I find myself looking for it, trying to revive it, spontaneously trying, most of the time in vain.

I remember, probably like every other living adult, where I was when I heard. I was riding my bike to work, west on Indian School, making the eight mile trip to my new high school after I had retired from twenty plus years in law enforcement. It was a new school year, part of a very long year dealing with not only a career change but my wife's cancer. Over my headphones, on a local country station, they started with 'there was a plane crash....' which changed to '...there was another plane crash....' It was the start of an incredible journey for all of us. Some, more than others. Unbelievable crippling, pain of loss and incredible, near-panic fear of trying anything to contact loved ones, only to find the phone lines were down.

Then another crash into the Pentagon.

I remember I couldn't peddle fast enough, trying to get to school to turn on the television in my room.

Then another crash into a corn field.

I miss it. I miss what happened after. I remember thinking about calling my family. The three kids were in their late teens and already knew about it and Joni was going to school. Writing this, I don't remember if we cancelled school or not. I don't think so. I think we tried to teach. If we did, I know it didn't work well.

I miss what happened-later. After the fires were out and the smoke cleared. Once we, collectively, could start thinking clearly again. It was funny. It was different then, I think, every other nation on the planet would have done it differently.

We turned in, on ourselves, and what counted most to us as humans, as Americans. I don't remember any drum beats, any chest pounding. I never saw a foreign flag burned in protest or a foreign embassy overrun and trashed. Maybe it happened, memory fades, but I don't think it did. I still, to this day, don't know how to spell Al Qaeda and just let Spellcheck fix it.

I remember sleeves being rolled up, flags, oh the flags-everyone had a flag out. There was even a house in our neighborhood that was vacant and someone jockeyed one on the front porch. Commercials on TV had them. Country songs said it all, asked it all.

And we prayed. Not only for those that died, or their families who were left without them, but I heard prayers for those that flew the planes, their families, their loved ones and friends, that they may see someday with clear eyes and their hearts may someday be turned.

Now, I write this the night before the tenth anniversary. I am tired and worn, no thanks to the last ten years. All three of my children are married. My only son survived two tours to the Sand Box. There are four grandchildren here, just getting back from taking two of them to the Scottsdale Quarter to let them play in the un-chlorinated fountain, which, I am sure, will generate some type of strep thing in their collective throats. The site was not there ten years ago. The parents of some of the other kids, were, by the looks of them, children themselves and don't have any real feelings about what the sunrise will bring tomorrow.

For some, it will be just another day. Someday, as with all significant days in the human run, the memories will fade and time will wear away on the mind and heart. Healing takes place and the young and parentless find a way through the days and grow to be parents themselves. But if I close my eyes hard enough and think long enough, I remember those weeks and months after that day. I remember crying, not with sadness but with so much pride of having been in the same career of those that ran the opposite direction. I think about that and realize every cop, every fireman, every person wearing a uniform was represented so well that day. Even those who didn't stand a watch, American people, for months, helped each other just to cope and reached out to each other and loved. We loved well those months after.

'...the greatest of these is love.' A guy wrote that in a letter a long time ago, told to him by someone else. That's what we do so well, we Americans. Almost to a fault some would say. '...the greatest of these is love.' Hmm, not sure I could ever find fault with that. Today, as I wake to a new day that happens to have a special significance, I will dwell on those words. They seem to work.

Always.