Where we found beauty in the ashes: in the memorial park where we laid flowers on 9/11 (my kid's idea--she is such a magical healer); in the delicate spider webs on the blooming lantanas; in the hills that surround us.
Every year I remember being in DC among my law school friends and our professors, faculty, and staff on 9/11. I remember the bravery and the will to keep going. We went back to school I think the next day and were sent right home after a bomb threat. Went back the day after that. Kept going back, worried every day for I don't know how long. Probably one of the best lessons I learned.
I never thought, at the time, about how this would be taught to my children. My kid's teacher read them a short true story about it, which I could overhear, and that prompted me to read posts on it, which I hadn't done in a few years.
This year, the post that stayed with me the most was about the sound of the Twin Towers themselves, the sighing and groaning they made, the seeming effort to stay up, the sorrow at failing. The anthropomorphizing of infrastructure really speaks to me, I don't know - maybe it's the sense that the buildings are expressing the sorrow of their builders.
I told her that what we always remember, what we never forget, is the love that had us looking out for strangers every day for a long time after that. Love that we can choose to remember every day. Love that liberates us, love that is incompatible with fear. Every day.
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