Where Were You?

There are certain moments in history when almost everyone from a generation can answer the same question:

Where were you when it happened?

September 11, 2001, is one of those moments for me.

Twenty-five years later, I can still remember that morning with incredible clarity.

I was 23 years old, recently graduated from Chapman University and renting a house with college friends. I was at 24 Hour Fitness, like I was so many mornings in my 20s. Ironically, all these years later, although at a different gym, I still start many of my mornings the same way.

The first plane had already hit the World Trade Center before I realized what was happening. Like so many people, I initially didn't understand what I was seeing.

And then I watched the second plane hit the second tower live on television.

In that instant, I knew something was terribly wrong.

I remember thinking, Oh my God. We're going to war.

I got into my car and immediately called my mom. Believe it or not, on one of my very first cell phones.

"Mom, you need to turn on the TV. Two planes have hit the World Trade Center."

There was another reason my mind immediately went to her.

Just a few years earlier, in 1996, my mom and I had been at the World Trade Center. She had chaperoned a trip to New York City with several of my high school friends to see the ball drop on New Year's Eve. During that trip, we visited the towers and the mall below them.

It was a place I had actually stood.

Now I was watching something incomprehensible happen there.

My emotions were everywhere. I went home and attempted to get ready for work. There wasn't really a way for me to easily contact my boss, so I slowly got myself together and eventually went into the office.

Once there, all of us were transfixed by the television.

We watched all day.

And I kept watching for days afterward.

I couldn't stop thinking about the people who had lost their lives. The families. The first responders. The people who had simply gone to work that morning or boarded an airplane, never imagining what was about to happen.

September 11 has never become just another day on the calendar for me.

Even now, it feels strange to plan something ordinary on that date. I want to watch the tributes. I want to hear the names. I want to remember.

But recently, a friend asked me a question that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

At what point do we stop having a moment of silence?

She wasn't suggesting that we should forget. Her question was bigger than that. She wondered when September 11 might begin to occupy the same place in our collective memory as Pearl Harbor and other defining tragedies in American history.

Her question stopped me.

Because 25 years is simultaneously a very long time and no time at all.

I am certainly not the same 23-year-old woman who stood in a gym watching that second plane hit the tower.

My life has unfolded in ways she couldn't possibly have imagined. I became a wife, a mother, built a career, experienced my own challenges and losses, and learned how precious and unpredictable life can be.

But something else has happened during those 25 years.

An entire generation has been born.

Including my own two sons.

For them, September 11 is history.

For me, it is a memory.

And I find myself wondering how we bridge that gap.

How do I explain what that day felt like to someone who didn't experience it?

I can tell my sons where I was. I can tell them about watching the second plane hit. I can tell them about calling their grandmother. I can tell them about the fear and uncertainty that followed.

But I also want them to understand something larger.

I want them to understand the magnitude of the lives lost that day and the sacrifices made afterward. I want them to understand the courage of the first responders who ran toward danger. I want them to recognize that behind every number is an individual person and a family whose life changed forever.

This summer, our family visited the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.

It was incredibly important to me that we go.

I didn't personally know anyone who died on September 11. Yet walking through that museum felt deeply personal.

I wanted to pay tribute.

I wanted my children to see the faces, hear the stories and understand that history is ultimately made up of individual human lives.

And perhaps most of all, I wanted in some small way to say:

You are not forgotten.

Twenty-five years later, I am realizing that remembrance doesn't have to mean remaining frozen in tragedy.

We can remember and still move forward.

In fact, maybe that is part of our responsibility.

We can honor those who died by telling their stories. We can teach generations who weren't there what happened. We can remember the extraordinary courage and humanity that emerged during an unimaginable time.

And then we can continue doing our part to make our communities and our country the very best they can be.

I don't know if there will someday come a September 11 when our country no longer stops for a moment of silence.

I don't know how September 11 will feel 50 years from now, when fewer people are alive who can answer the question, "Where were you?"

But I do know what I can do.

I can remember.

I can tell my children what I saw and how it changed me.

I can honor the people whose lives ended that morning and the countless others whose lives were forever altered.

And I can carry forward the lessons I have learned in the 25 years since: that life is precious, that tomorrow isn't promised, that courage matters, that humanity matters, and that even after our darkest days, we have the ability—and the responsibility—to keep moving forward.

September 11, 2001, will never be an ordinary day to me.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember exactly where I was.

And I will never forget.