Little did I know that 10 years later I would be writing the news on September 11, 2011.
On that day in 2001, I was still deciding between marine biology and emergency pediatrics as potential careers. Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were just that funny pair on the Today show and the World Trade Center was still on my list of landmarks to visit whenever I made it back to the Big Apple.
It would be another six years before I set foot in NYC.
That's what ground zero looked like in December 2007. Nothing like the grand skyscrapers I remembered passing as a young child. Less like the rubble pile I remembered seeing on television for the latter half of 2001 and beyond.
An announcement over the loudspeaker during my second period math class asking teachers to turn off TV's and radio caught everyone off guard.. until one of the kids spoke up and said a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. I still couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong.
My friends and I made our regular stop at our old science teacher's classroom that morning, only to have him tell us to come in and shut the door. And that's when I watched the south tower of the World Trade Center collapse on live television.
There isn't much that will ever take my breath away in this lifetime as everything did in that single moment.
I was barely 13 years old. My mind took off in a million different directions immediately.. wondering if my mom was going to be okay in the medical center.. if my dad was going to be stuck on the Air Force base.. or even called back to the military just a few short years after getting out. It seems a little crazy now, but we'd never dealt with anything like this. I just didn't know.
Both of my parents were waiting in the parking lot to pick me up from school that day. I just remember running to them and bursting into tears, knowing I was so lucky to have both of my parents there.. while hundreds of kids just lost theirs.
I grew up in the military. I knew what it was like to watch my friends' parents leave for overseas assignments. I was also lucky enough to spend the earliest part of my childhood in a more peaceful time, so the fear wasn't really there. Then I heard the stories from friends on my last military base.. stories of the base shutting down, all of the kids in school off base being loaded on buses immediately and taken home.. not knowing what would happen next.
It really comes down to the fear of not knowing. And the anger that built within because someone had the guts to get on an airplane and help end thousands of lives.
I still remember listening to then-First Lady Laura Bush address the children in America.. and realizing then that things would be okay.
The scars of 9/11/01 are still there.. and I will probably never be able to watch footage from that day without breaking down. It will still feel like yesterday when I see it in a history book twenty years from now. It was a defining moment for several generations.. one that falls in the same league as Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination.
The moment that serves as a black eye, but doesn't have to be a final blow. Thousands died, but our nation still prevailed.
So here I am 10 years later.. the world has changed, but that day is still fresh on my mind and my heart. I don't just watch the news - I write it, and I remember that there are thousands of men and women who fight to make sure I have the right to do so.. because freedom isn't free.
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