DO YOU REMEMBER?

Where were YOU at “8:46am” on Tuesday, September 11, 2001? I was standing in my then 9 year old son’s room watching the news, folding laundry, and literally glued to the screen. When the South Tower was hit, I vividly remember clenching the bath towel that was in my hand, pressing it to my chest, holding on to it for dear life, and being paralyzed by an adrenaline dump that at the time l’d only ever felt once before, which was at the moment I realized I was about to be raped in a parking garage in downtown Dallas on March 5, 1992. I couldn’t stop staring at the TV and was physically sick and numb. A few minutes later, my ex-husband called me:

Catherine! America is under attack! Get in the car and pull Christian out of school NOW!

AND I DID! I sped to his school in sheer panic and daze in nothing but my pajamas and a bathrobe only to be met by countless other parents (many of whom were also in pajamas and bathrobes) standing in line at the door in tears. Christian was attending Canyon Creek Christian Academy in Richardson, Texas, at the time which was just a few blocks away from The Islamic Association of North Texas that unfortunately and WRONGFULLY experienced immense backlash from the attacks that I wholeheartedly believe were an inside job and not the international terrorism the powers that were and accompanying media outlets so vehemently wanted us all to believe.

How little did I know on that day that I would henceforth become all too familiar with that very same “paralyzing adrenaline dump” with each of the life, psyche, and neurologically altering traumas I’d then go on to experience MANY times after that day … not the least of which was yesterday as I was glued to the screen once again at the moment Charlie Kirk was pronounced dead. By the way? Guess what I was doing at the exact moment I heard the words, “We have breaking news for you. Charlie Kirk has been pronounced dead”?

I WAS FOLDING BATH TOWELS!

For those of you reading this who weren’t yet born when “September 11th” became our new reality, it is my most sincere hope prayer that you’ve since educated yourself about what REALLY happened that day. Also? I just wish so badly you “kids” could have known what it was like to live in THAT America … where we were still “ONE Nation under God” and relatively free from harm in our own homes and public places. I’m haunted by the ghost of her and miss her terribly.