September 11, 2001

My mother's not the same.

If you passed her on the street, you wouldn't know. At parties she still makes everyone laugh and at work she she is still focused and at home she still checks my brother's math homework. Even I forget sometimes.

And then we are on vacation in Miami in mid-August, trying to escape the oppressive heat in the lukewarm swimming pool. I can feel the sun leaving freakles on my shoulders as I run my hands over the water, occasionally slicing through the surface and causing ripples to surround me. I look over at my mother and smile. Our only worries are for our pina coladas that shift and melt in plastic cups by the side of the pool.

And then a plane is in the air above us, close. Kids stop splashing and look up, while their fathers do the same and marvel at how close the airport must be. But my mom doesn't look up. Her head is bowed down towards the water but I can still see her eyes squeezed shut, her fingers pressing into her ears.

"I hate that sound."

Five years ago today my mom was late for work. She sat in traffic listening to Howard Stern and slently fuming at my brother and sister for not being ready for school on time and furiously scrolling through her Blackberry, trying to telecommute from the Beltway.

Five years ago today she called me in my brand new dorm room, 600 miles away from her for the first time to tell me to put on the news because something big was happening in New York. When she realized the time difference and my roomate told her that I was still sleeping, she said not to worry about it and that she'd call back later. She hung up and inched her car down 395.

Five years ago today at 9:43 am my mother's green Ford Explorer was stuck in traffic next to the Pentagon when a plane that she quickly realized was flying far too low sliced through the sky above her head and, with a sound that she wishes she could erase from her memory, slammed into the building, sending a ball of fire into the air and shaking the ground. She can't forget how the plane was so close that she saw the individual windows, and is still haunted by what the people sitting on the other side of those windows saw.

Five years ago today I was waking up for my second week of classes when I got the message that my mom had called 15 minutes earlier, and was stuck in traffic on her way to work. As I watched CNN, news of the Pentagon broke and the realization that my mom would be stuck in the gridlock of the Beltway as it happened swept through my body and made me sick.

Five years ago today I walked to class in a fog as my thumb hit redial on my cell, unable to connect with my mother. I swept past New Yorkers crying together in huddles and professors staring numbly at television screens. And after months of excitement over leaving Washington, over getting as far away from my parents as possible, there was no place in the world that I wanted to be more than back home with my family.

Five years ago today my mother returned home with something missing. And five years ago today I cried for her. I cried for myself and the sudden loss of innocence that came too soon after setting out on my own for the first time. And I cried for the thousands of kids whose parents, five years ago today, didn't come home at all.