So, here it's been 7 years since that awful day when our country was attacked by terrorists and somehow hearing about it all over again still tears a hole in my heart.
I read the book, Fireboat, by Maira Kalman, to my 4th graders today and, even though I thought I was well over this event, I found myself choking back tears as I read the story. The kids looked at me, wonderingly. I thought of David from my art class who lost both of his daughters. They worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. I thought of Stephanie, a young woman who babysat for our boys when they were young. She lost her husband that day and she still hasn't remarried. I thought of all the people whose names I can't remember, people lost in the rubble, reduced to bits of flesh and bone found by the cadaver police dogs or haphazardly by firefighters, EMTS or others. I thought of the signs draped over the parkways that day and in the weeks afterward when the normally jam-packed roads were nearly empty. "Pray for the Missing EMTS". "Pray for the Missing Firefighters". And then "David, Come Home". That one got me. I also thought of all the little kids in the neighborhood selling lemonade and trying to help, in some small way, to raise money for the families of the victims. It was both sweet and sad. All those images crowded my mind as I read the story of the fireboat, the John J. Harvey.
Sometimes I want to forget this day ever happened. Like the day Kennedy or Martin Luther King was assassinated, somehow I can't. It's just as important to remember the sad memories as it is the good. They're all part of being human.
