Today

I'm sure there are a million 9/11 remembrance blogs getting posted today. I'm also sure there are a million blogs getting posted today that have nothing to do with September 11th, 2001. I'm not one to think this is a wholly terrible thing. I think that it has been 8 years. I think that a lot of healing has gone on for those who can heal. There are those whose lives have been left with a hole that can never be filled. The rest of us have reached some stable level of insecurity. A feeling of a lack of safety. But life goes on, even if it is in some mutated form.

My mom said to me that day (or one of the following days, they all ran together--then and now), "I thought your generation would never go through something like this." We didn't either. We grew up in such a bubble. I was 16 on September 11th, 2001. My birthday was just two weeks away. I was a senior in high school. On September 10th, 2001 my Girl Scout troop had booked a end-of-the-troop trip to New York City for December. I was in the process of procrastination from working on my college application.

Life was totally normal. And then it wasn't.

All of a sudden it was scary and unsafe. In Arlington, VA, parents (including mine) and friends, and neighbors work in the Pentagon and travel out of Dulles Airport daily. Everything is federal government centric. School was closed. For days afterward, instead of the regular air traffic over head (I grew up in a flight path for Reagan National Airport), we heard nothing but fighter jets. I had no idea how comforting that sound could be.

Life wasn't normal. And then, slowly, it was.

Normal took on a different meaning. Our college application deadlines were pushed back, but they still existed. I was accepted. I shopped at The Container Store with everyone else. My Girl Scout troop went to New York. We paused in silence by the gaping hole in the financial district and we saw the Rockettes. I went to college. We went to war. I dated a soldier. I graduated from college. I had friends who came home from battle, no older than 23. I got a Masters degree. We face a major recession. Life goes on. Normal is different, but it is still normal.

And so, here we are. Eight years later. Eight years of war. Eight years of mourning. Eight years of healing. Eight years of shifting normal. We can't forget. It seems so cliche. It is, really, but it would be such a disservice to the victims, to us, to forget. To forget would be to let something happen again. We also cannot dwell. This, too, is a disservice. There is a difference between remembrance and dwelling. Life. Goes. On. When we do not move with it, it moves without us.

So, normal is different. So, many blogs will not be about 9/11. It is somewhat of a comfort to me to think that thousands of people will wake up tomorrow and realize it is the 12th. In that moment they will pause and remember. It's fitting. The 12th is the day after. Eight years and one day after. Normal.