Remembering

This is a nail blog, and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has nothing to do with the usual subject matter here, yet it seems wrong to post today and not acknowlege that something important happened nine years ago. For me, the date holds additional significance because my dad died on September 11, 2000. One year later, Mr. Karen and I were on a road trip on the east coast, and I was thinking about my dad that morning as Mr. and I had breakfast at our campsite next to a lake in Maine and enjoyed the quiet for a few hours before we headed into town for a bit of shopping and lunch. We had no idea about the terrorist attacks until we stepped into a quilt shop (Mr. Karen is very tolerant of my various hobbies) and saw a television behind the counter playing not quilting videos or daytime talk shows but the live news coverage. We spent the rest of the week catching just snippets of news on the radio as we drove or from conversations with people we met at various stops we made. My dad was still much on my mind, of course, but the confusion and shock about the attacks was there, too, and it all sort of got mixed together in my head.
One year after the attacks, Mr. Karen and I were in Disneyland and stood together with other guests when then park shut down for a silent remembrance at noon, which was eerie and fitting. Between then and the second anniversary of the attacks, I made a memory quilt for a woman whose husband had died in the World Trade Center that day. As I have every year since, today I think of her and her son, and all the other people affected by the tragedy, and of my dad, and pause to be thankful for the blessings in my life.

I will return to regularly scheduled programming shortly.