Nine Years and One Day

Nine years and one day ago

classes
work
what shoes went with my outfit

Nineteen, hovering a fine line between child and adult

Nine years ago today

I asked my mom to drive me home
what I saw on TV
what I saw downtown
cars lining up at the gas stations
shelves emptied of water and bread
"We're going to war," they said.

unsafe? A new concept.
never feared for those I loved
until now
devastation struck thousands of miles away
while I hugged my mom on the couch

Nine years and one day ago

I could define War
Freedom
Terrorism

Nine years ago today
I understood

 human nature at its very darkest
then at its very brightest
hatred that scared me
then a hope that uplifted me

Nine years ago today
thousands of hearts were silenced
then a few weeks later
more, halfway across the world

when we say we'll never forget
I pray we never do
I hope beyond hope
we've learned to value freedom
and cherish life.

"On this day, we also honor those who died so that others might live: the firefighters and first responders who climbed the stairs of two burning towers; the passengers who stormed a cockpit; and the men and women who have, in the years since, borne the uniform of this country and given their lives so that our children could grow up in a safer world," Obama said.

 "They may wish to drive us apart but we will not give in to their hatred and prejudice," he said. "The perpetrators of this evil act didn't simply attack America, they attacked the very idea of America itself.
"And so the highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most -- to stay true to who we are as Americans, to renew our sense of common purpose, to say that we define the character of our country and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are."

Well said, Mr. President. Well said.