9-11: 5 years later

When I was a little girl, I thought the twin towers were really cool. I liked the fact that they were so tall though I never understood why they called them twin towers if they weren't in fact the same height.

Growing up, I quit being amused by them. I thought they were two buildings that housed a whole lot of workaholics wearing suits. In my teens I remember going in there with my step father once to see our lawyer. The only thing I found particularly cool about the building this time around was the elevators. They were fast.

Five years ago when the planes hit the towers I had just woken up. I had flown from Miami back to Hamburg the day before and had arrived in Germany Sept. 11 8:00am German time. I took a shower, ate, and took a 2 hour nap. Like 20 minutes after I woke up Gus was on the phone telling us to turn on the TV that a plane had crashed into one of the towers.

That was a rough day in general for a number of reasons...we knew people who were in the towers, a few who worked in buildings that were in the general area, someone in the Pentagon, and then people who should have been in those places but were miraculously late.

A lot of innocent people died that day.

A lot of death brough forth that day. Many more innocent people have died since. People have cried for revenge, but it's a vicious circle and you can't bomb your way to apologies or guilt, and even if you could, more death isn't going to bring the dead back....not the Americans, not the Afghani, not the Iraqui, not the Palestinians, not the Lebanese.

I wonder if I am a terrible person for believing that this tragic incident was karmatic; that it was an accident waiting to happen; that it had to happen...that it was a lesson.

It saddens me that since that day terror and fear are an intrical part of children's vocabulary and are part of a way of life. It worries me that life as we know it, will never be the same as it was before that. It scares me knowing that we are never really safe no matter where we go.

...and it's probably not over.

Violence begets more violence.