President Obama is about to announce that the US has killed Osama Bin Laden. The world is is changing around us, sometimes it feels like its happening right under our feet.
I remember 9/11 so well. We were married (no kids) living in San Francisco. We lived in a rented apartment on Fulton Street and James was working in Alameda. We hadn't even had our first anniversary yet. I remember not wanting him to go to work and sitting in front of the TV watching CNN for about 4 days straight. I was working remotely for Search401k at that point and many clients worked in Manhattan. I always got up early in the morning (between 4-5) so I could get organized before the office opened in Minnesota. I was awake when the first plane hit and watched the second plane hit the towers live on CNN. As soon as we saw the second plane low over the city, we knew that nothing would be the same, that this was no accident.
Flying had been such a huge part of our lives at that point - James and I both flew almost every week, some week several flights a week, that it was terrifying to think that a plane was being used as a weapon. I remember once the ground stop was lifted and we started flying for work again that I was always upgraded to first class and sat with two or three other people on an almost completely empty plane (and at least one of the other passengers was an air marshal). It was a strange and actually very friendly time to be flying. In those immediate months you always knew the flight attendants names and where they were from because there was always time to visit. Sometimes they sat down with us in first class to chat or read. We were all nervous about flying, and the quiet emptiness of the airports and planes didn't help at first.
Air travel is now back to loud, crowded and crazy. Security and financial concerns have made everything even more complicated, I guess we've already created a new normal.
We were supposed to leave for China a few weeks after 9/11 and scrubbed the trip because of some anti-American sentiments the Chinese government made in the wake of the attacks. Instead we went camping in the Pacific Northwest - which turned into a wonderful adventure. The US began bombing Afghanistan on the day our flight to China was suppose to depart. We felt relieve at the time, but in retrospect we would have been fine in China. 20/20 hindsight.
It is cliche but it feels true, as a young adult, 9/11 was a loss of innocence for many people our age. I remember that Pat Schneeman called us in San Francisco because he remembered that many of the Doughertys were police officers in the New York area - I still think about how thoughtful that was for a college student.
Tonight I got the initial news of Bin Laden's death from Facebook and I'm sitting with my laptop in bed (after tucking all of you into your cozy St Paul beds), Googling, Facebooking and waiting to hear from the president. Not only is the world changing across the ocean, but also right in our home, in the way we interact with the world.
I had an incredibly strong initial response, I was shocked as I started to cry when NBC announced that they had confirmed that Bin Laden was dead. So much is still unclear, foggy. It will take years before we have any perspective on this - but still something has changed that much is clear. There is a whole generation of people who enlisted in the US military as a response to 9/11 and the desire to capture Bin Laden, for those men and women, this is a turning point of sorts. I do not revel in the assassination, somehow I still believe that murder is murder is murder. And yet this still feels like a kind of justice. I do not want to let our fear, sadness and anger define this period in our lives, but rather our resiliency and hopefulness of for a peaceful tomorrow. We always pray for peace in our hearts and in our world, I hope that tomorrow becomes an important step forward for our county and our world. I guess only you will know how this all turns out.
Seamus is still lingering awake - I think he can tell that something is wrong. And indeed Bin Laden was killed in what sounds like an almost theatrical quality. Amazing. President Obama is beginning to address the nation.
There is no doubt that the world is in constant, surprising motion.
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