10 years

I was just about to post a typical, light-hearted entry with an outfit or reviews from my recent trips to Anthropologie, and then I turned on the TV and remembered what day it is today.

Like most people, I remember where I was 10 years ago when I heard about the attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. I was 23 years old and I was starting grad school, still living at home with my parents outside of Ottawa. I was on the computer that morning chatting online with a friend from Toronto, who was working downtown that day. All of a sudden she typed, turn on the TV, a plane just hit the World Trade Centre. I did and I watched for a while, but it was confusion at that point and no one knew exactly what had happened. I turned off the TV and went about my morning business, getting ready for school and so on. I turned the TV on again a few hours later and learned that the other tower had been struck and both of them had come down by this point. I called my parents over and we watched the TV in shock for a while. I’d been to New York City for the first time in 1997 and I’d fallen in love with the city, and my heart was broken.

The week before, I’d been hospitalized because of a severe asthma attack, so later that day, I had to go back to the hospital for some follow-up breathing tests. The TVs were on in the waiting room and scenes of the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing kept replaying. The respiratory tech administering my tests told me to breathe as though it were any normal day…but of course, not like that day.

I visited NYC less than a year later, in June 2002. My mom and I stayed downtown, not far from the WTC site. I happened to be the only one on a boat cruise around Lower Manhattan (everyone else got on the one stopping at Ellis Island), so I had my own private tour and sat chatting with the tour guide for the entire time, listening to his recollections of that day. I also stood and looked at the WTC site, and found it incredibly eerie. It was difficult to be there.

10 years later, I’m 33 now and I think I just accept the changes that have happened in the world because of 9/11.

Last month, I went to NYC and stayed in a hotel right at the WTC. We had a view of the construction going on at the site.

So as I was watching the memorial on TV this morning, I decided it’s not the time for me to be posting about fashion or shopping. I’ll be back to my light-hearted, mostly frivolous self tomorrow, but today is a day to pause and remember.