I still cry. And the tears came today as I decided to add yesterday's and today's editions of the local paper to my box downstars. It's the box of papers from the 2000 election. My box of papers from September 2001. It's the box I will one day bring up for my kids, writing a modern history report, asking me: "What was it like then?" Then they were 3, 2 and 6 months. Today I send them off to school (8, 7 and 5) and telling them: "You're going to hear a lot about the Twin Towers today. If you have questions we can all talk together at dinner." And so I add the "Five Years Later ..." stories and a long journal entry to the box in the hopes that I will better understand where we were, where we are and where we hope to be. In looking back to the entries I wrote in those first days after the world changed I found this, which I share here as we all stop to remember it's a different world. September 18, 2001 -- There is a ripple each of us creates, whether we know it or not. It is born in the simple acts of kindness as we reach out in times of trouble, in times of joy, in common decency. Oh how the ripples have turned to mighty waves as we think of more than 5,000 people missing and almost 500 confirmed dead in these attacks.
How many lives are touched in their loss? Each life touches the water of the earth, the basic element of our existence. And from that center, we reach out to our children, our siblings, our fellow students, our co-workers, our neighbors. We reach and we reach. And as we reach the outermost circles, the center disappears … spread so far that we forget where it began, we just know we’ve all been touched. And that’s what’s happening here.
How far reaching those individual lives. The waves have washed over the world.
