My husband directs an orchestra here in the Denver area and they are performing a Sept 11 Memorial Concert this afternoon. They'll be playing Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings"—a piece that always makes me weep whenever I hear it. I'll be attending the concert, of course, and I honestly don't know if my heart will be able to bear it.

Our kids were 8 and 9 years old on September 11, 2001. I remember that my son had just had his 8th birthday, but we had postponed the celebration we had planned the weekend before because of bad weather (it was a pool party). It was our first year back living in Colorado after being gone for 10 years, and it was also our first year of homeschooling.  I still have the world history books we were using back then—ironically our focus at the time was the Middle East. On his way out the door to go to work, my husband said that he'd heard on the radio something about a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers in New York. We both assumed that it was a small private plane, and wondered how in the world any pilot could be so incompetent.

My husband left, the radio was turned off and the kids and I began our day. Later that morning, our church choir director called to cancel the meeting I was to have with him that evening. Without going into detail, he said something about a special prayer service that our pastor decided to hold that night and he needed to be a part of that. I still didn't have any idea what was going on, and continued with the lessons with the kids. Shortly after that, my husband called and very somberly asked if I had been listening to the news. Since we had been doing school all day, I said no, of course not. He told me to turn on the  TV because the plane he had told me about this morning was actually a commercial airline that had been hijacked and it looked as if the US was under attack. I got off the phone and ran downstairs and switched on the TV. Instantly, I was drawn into the images of the billowing smoke, crumbling buildings, people running and screaming and visibly stunned and shaken reporters on the news. I stood there watching, stupefied and disbelieving. Eventually, I quickly ran back up the stairs, grabbed both kids and and we sat on the couch as I hugged them tightly and wept. My daughter remembers me saying something about the attacks as I ran up the stairs, and that it scared her. We continued to sit there and I prayed aloud with tears streaming down my face. School was over for the day.

I sit here now, remembering, again with tears streaming down my face.