The World Changed That Morning

There are some days you remember because something wonderful happened. Others stay with you because your life changed. September 11, 2001 is one of those days when it felt like the whole world changed at once.

Twenty-five years later, I do not remember that morning like a chapter in a history book. I remember it as a regular Tuesday that started at home. I remember the dogs. I remember the television. I remember getting ready for work. And I remember how quickly an ordinary morning became something none of us could understand.

I was at home watching the morning news. There was no reason to think I was about to watch history unfold in real time. Then the pictures from New York started coming across the television.

At first, there was confusion. How could an airplane hit the World Trade Center? Was it an accident? What was happening? Then another plane hit.

Whatever uncertainty existed disappeared in an instant.

I sat there watching scenes that are still difficult to describe. The smoke. The fire. The towers. The people. Some images never really leave you, no matter how many years pass.

Bush was at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota that morning. The official record shows that he addressed the country from the school at 9:30 a.m. after learning that two planes had struck the World Trade Center. I remember watching his expression and realizing that the person sitting in that classroom was processing the same unbelievable news the rest of us were trying to process.

I was watching from home. He was sitting at the center of a national crisis.

Twenty-five years later, I wanted to hear his recollection of that day in his own words. That is why I wanted to include this National Geographic interview as part of this remembrance.

History has spent twenty-five years debating the decisions, policies and consequences that followed September 11. This remembrance is not an attempt to settle any of those arguments. It is simply my memory of what it felt like to be an American watching those first hours and days unfold.

I was grateful for President Bush's leadership during that time. I needed to hear confidence when I had very little confidence about what was going to happen next. I needed to believe that somebody was in charge and that our country was going to get through it.

She was in Pennsylvania.

As reports came in about United Airlines Flight 93 crashing there, my mind went into overdrive. I remember pulling up maps and trying to understand where Karen was in relation to everything that was happening. Today, we can look up almost anything instantly on a phone. In that moment, information felt scattered, incomplete and terrifying.

And then there was the simple problem of trying to reach her.

Phone networks were overwhelmed. Calls were difficult. Every minute without contact felt longer than it probably was. I just wanted to hear her voice and know that she was safe.

Eventually, I did.

Then came the next question: how do I get her home?

Flying was no longer an option. Airports and air travel across the country had effectively stopped. So we figured out another way. The important thing was not how she got home. The important thing was that she did.

Something fundamental had changed. The things we assumed were safe suddenly did not feel quite as certain. Like a lot of people, we started thinking about things we had never seriously considered before.

We made bug-out bags.

Looking back now, that detail says a lot about how we felt. We were not preparing for some specific thing we knew was coming. We were responding to the realization that something we never imagined could happen had just happened.

The world felt less predictable.

Over time, that fear softened. Life has a way of demanding that you keep moving. You go back to work. You pay bills. You celebrate birthdays (Happy Birthday Whitney!). You raise a family. You take trips. You laugh again.

But you do not completely forget.

Travel has become a huge part of our life. Karen and I travel. Our family travels together. Some of our favorite memories have been made getting on an airplane, taking a road trip, exploring somewhere new, or simply escaping together for a while.

But air travel changed after September 11.

The Transportation Security Administration was established later in 2001, and over the years that followed we all learned a new airport routine: security lines, identification checks, baggage screening, laptops out, body scanners, shoes and belts, and rules that became so familiar we eventually stopped thinking much about them.

Before 9/11, travel was mostly about getting to the destination. After 9/11, getting through the process of being allowed to get there became part of the trip.

Today we move through those checkpoints almost automatically. We complain about the line. We gather our bags. We put ourselves back together on the other side of security.

Then we go on with our trip.

That may be one of the things I understand differently after twenty-five years.

They changed the way we traveled. They changed the way we thought about security. They changed the way we looked at the world. But they did not stop us from living.

Karen and I kept building our life. Our family grew. We traveled. We had adventures. We made mistakes. We celebrated milestones. We watched our daughters grow up. We kept creating stories that had nothing to do with fear.

And maybe that is why remembering September 11 feels different to me now than it did in the years immediately afterward.

I still remember the fear.

I still remember the anger.

I still remember the disbelief.

But I also know what came next in my own life.

Life.

Not because the day stopped mattering, and certainly not because the people who were lost should ever be forgotten, but because continuing to live is part of what human beings do.

We absorb the things that change us. We adapt. We carry the memories. And somehow we keep moving forward.

And I remember one ordinary Tuesday morning in my own life.

I remember sitting at home watching television.

I remember worrying about Karen.

I remember finally hearing her voice.

I remember the relief when she came home.

I remember building bug-out bags because suddenly the world felt different.

And twenty-five years later, I can look around at the life we continued to build and realize something else:

We kept loving each other. We kept traveling. We kept gathering the family. We kept making memories.

And today, I remember.  

I wrote a song about it too called We Remember.  You can watch that music video on my Music tab.

#September11 #NeverForget #911Remembered #25YearsLater #Family #Perspective