Do you remember where you were that day? I was working at a bank where we didn't have access to internet use during work. After calling loan servicing for a customer, Jeff on the other end stopped and said there was an attack. I completed my call with the customer and stepped over to the snack shop near by just in time to see the second plane hit the twin towers. In the days that came, so much was uncovered... All of a sudden, we weren't as safe as we believed we were. The military was called up and deployments began.
This was all distant to me. One of my cousins was on the initial invasion, but outside of that, I was disconnected to all of it. It would take a couple of years and the loss of a few people I knew - 1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq, before it became my life.
So here we are 20 years later and what to show. Iraq isn't stable, Afghanistan definitely isn't, but Bin Laden was taken care of. Politicians pretend to know what's going on, veterans who have been there know all too well.
People as a whole want to have an opinion on the matter... 'we shouldn't have been there', 'we should have done this or that'... it's like watching a football game where you have all kinds of thoughts on what the coach should have done, but that's not what happened.
Here's what I know... 20 years ago we went to war, recently that 'ended' in a disaster. I only served for six years before being medically retired - my husband is on year 16 of active service. Between the two of us, we have seven deployments under our belts. We've missed holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, funerals.... as life went on back here when we weren't there.
Halfway into this timeframe, our first child was born. 9/11 is a piece of history for them. They may never know how deep it runs within us because it's not 'real' for them. While they live the sacrifice of the reprecussions, the event itself is no different to them than significant events that happened before I was born.
So how do you realistically connect their current life and our challenges? The simple answer is you don't. Our history isn't theirs, the perception they have based on the life they have lived thus far will change their view of the reality they have.
Our boys will forever have a piece of war placed on them, not because they have been there firsthand, but because both of their parents have lived it and struggled somedays with dealing with the realities of it. For our boys, 9/11 is a part of history, but the war that followed was front and center.
The lesson for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 may be a minor disaster as I struggle to even try to word one complete thought from that day, but the struggles of the in between aren't lost to our boys even though they aren't old enough to have been around.
