It can’t be helped. This moment 7 years ago today is our generation’s– Where were you when it happened?

Sep­tem­ber 11th, is now a day that a pop­u­la­tion of human­ity, for­ever encased in a bub­ble of time, will always imme­di­ately flash­back to. It can’t be helped.

I was get­ting ready to catch a flight out of LA  back to Atlanta. I saw the events unfold on The Today Show. I went to school and lived in NYC for nearly 14 years. I felt strangely detached. I still knew a lot peo­ple in NYC. But at that moment I didn’t shed a tear.  Hard to admit. But really, I think I was one of them at that moment, a prag­matic New Yorker and wanted what all New York­ers wanted that day– I just wanted to go home.

After check­ing out all my options to get home ASAP. There was only 1 choice — Grey­hound. That was it. I booked my ticket and was on it the next day at 5pm.

What a relief just to get on the bus. I felt like I had done some­thing. Made a deci­sion. Was mov­ing for­ward. 32 stops and 56 hours later I arrived home.

Look­ing back I can say it wasn’t so bad. I never really real­ized you could see across the Rio Grande to Mex­ico from El Paso, TX. A local woman got on the bus in Gram­bling, LA and sold ham and mayo sand­wiches she had made in her kitchen.  New Mex­ico was really very green and pic­turesque. Lots of Span­ish moss hang­ing from the trees in Mis­sis­sippi. I had a 2 lb box of See’s candy from my aunt that I ate all the way home.

Dal­las is a big hub and changeover in peo­ple on the bus. It was a bit rougher clien­tele than had been on the bus pre­vi­ous. One cou­ple didn’t make it on board– they were deemed too drunk and dis­or­derly. So I started to scope out the crowd wait­ing for my bus to fig­ure out who I could make fast friends with in order to be seatmates.…hmmm not a lot to choose from. I felt a lit­tle bump and looked down, a petite elderly woman was next to me. She didn’t look me in the eye, but I could tell by her prox­im­ity that she had the same idea in mind — we each seemed harm­less, let’s stay together. We didn’t speak much. A sim­ple nod here and there. Shared some See’s candy. But when she got off the bus in Jack­son MS, she turned to me and said “You take care of your­self.” Funny, at that time, those words meant a lot.

1 year later I was on a plane to my beloved Italy. Sept. 11th, 2002. As we sat in the line up wait­ing to take off, you could feel it. A bit of ten­sion. I hadn’t heard any whis­pers or mum­bling about it being the anniver­sary of 9/11 from any­one at the air­port or on the flight. It was almost as if no one wanted to bring it up but still wanted it acknowl­edged. Some­how put it out to the Uni­verse. The pilot came on for the nor­mal greet­ing.…“We are third in line for take-off to our des­ti­na­tion of Rome. We thank-you for fly­ing Delta, espe­cially today.” Funny, at that time, those words meant a lot.