September 9
Took Sue to the doctor. Yep. Strep.
Iago from Aladdin was going through my head.
"Oh there's a big surprise! That's an incredible - I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die of not surprise"
Of course, if had been a surprise, we wouldn't have been there.
She'll be not contagious by tomorrow. Wonder who we infected at school Tuesday. If you go to our school and get one of those pink slips about possibly being exposed to strep. Yep. That was us.
Changed my sheets. Love clean sheets.
Did homework. Had to watch a really great powerpoint explaining how a computer works. I'm going to make my kids all watch it. It's really a good refresher course.
Watched a recap of 9/11 on Dateline with the kids. It made me realize how much my kids both did and didn't know about it. I hoped it wasn't too overwhelming now that they are older and can process what happened. But I think it was also important that they got an idea of what it felt like. I tried to emphasize the heroism of all the people who stopped and helped others and of the people on flight 93 who were making sure that their plane wasn't going to be used like the others. We talked about how special the fire fighters and others were. I wanted them to take away the importance of being your brother's keeper and reaching out to help others. That day helped me realize how much everyone shares the same values, even if you don't see them on television much. It was the humanity of being people together that stood out to me that day. We were all one big family.
It also brought back memories - my friend who I took a birthday present to yesterday was on the phone with me that morning. We were just talking and I think we both had the morning news on in the background. "Did you see that?" "Wow. A plane into the building. He must have been off course." "Weird." We thought it was something much smaller than it turned out to be - a freak accident of some sort with maybe a small personal plane. Then they announced something else. Another plane. Then another. All planes were grounded. F-16's were scrambled. The President was on AirForce One and the Vice-President was underground. We sat on the phone watching the news together. We would talk in between new news. "Another plane!" "Oh my gosh." "The tower went down!" "Another plane in Pennsylvania? What's it doing there? What happened? Why there?" "What is going on?" "OH!" "OH!" We kept waiting for the next piece of new information and wondered when it would stop.
We were far enough from major cities at the time that neither of us was too worried about where we lived, and thankfully, our families. But it was surreal. It was odd watching the news come in, unfiltered, unprocessed, and still unpackaged. Everyone on television was trying to figure out what was going on just like we were. Reporters and other people were calling in from wherever they were. Video was being run in to the station from various sources. Cell phones were down and it was hard to get information.
I cried for the lady, pregnant with twins or who had just had twins that they put on the air, calling in. She couldn't find her husband. She had heard he might be at a hospital. She was crying. He worked in one of the towers and she needed him to come home. I think she said he worked for Canter Fitzgerald.
Eventually the two of us were just sitting on the phone, our mouths hanging open. I was trying to keep an eye on my toddlers. I was trying to keep them playing with other things or in the back yard. By 10:30 or 11:00 we hung up. There wasn't much left to say we hadn't said. We were stunned and I wandered through the rest of the day trying to process what was going on.
The oldest reminded me that she was in first grade when it happened. And that reminded me of my third grade teacher. She talked about how she was a little girl, in about first grade, when her mother called her in from playing. Her mother was crying, and told her the Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor.
The oldest said she came in from school and news about the towers was on TV. She wasn't sure how to react, but I wasn't freaking out, so she said, she figured she shouldn't freak out either. It must be not that unusual.
I remember trying to calmly explain what had happened to her without being too alarmist. I didn't know that this would affect us at all and I didn't want my kids to get upset over something that was far away. Apparently it worked.
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