Some Days There are No Words, Only Tears

I can smell fall coming; a slight cooling to the air around me. As I sat outside watching P & B run yesterday evening, their brother at the vet following surgery to remove from his stomach and intestines a pompom off one of my blanket he decided to eat, the air smelled like home - like a place forever embedded in and on my heart. Memories of times long gone flooded my mind. 

Now as the air around me warms this morning heading into the afternoon, I look at the houses around me; tucked away, safe, in an Alabama neighborhood. I speculate and make assumptions about their inhabitants, knowing little to nothing about who my neighbors are and how their lives may have been shaped 20 years ago this morning. Shouts of which team to support in typical Saturday football contests and the whirr of lawn mower motors fill the air around me; without pausing, today would seem typical, but, I sit, crying on my back porch. My neighbors equally unaware of how a day 20 years past changed my life and those around me in a place I call home. 

My mother was ironing and talking on the phone. The news was playing in the background. I remember sitting on my parents' bed waiting to go to school, soft fall light coming in the stretch of small windows above the bed. If I'm honest, I only assume today my father was at work in a hangar across post. To this day, I only vaguely know of his responsibilities in the Army. Most days, it is probably a bigger blessing than I realize to have never been burdened with the knowledge of missions he was responsible for completing. Other days, I wonder. It was not long after this day 20 years ago my dad would begin a series of deployments, kept away from home fighting a fight which once seemed endless. But, even today, can we call the battle won? Was it possibly all for nothing as the hands of time in a war-torn country are quickly spun backwards?

I remember going to school; how I got there, I am not positive. I don't recall taking the bus, but I equally don't recall my mother driving me to school. It was still early for us as we were an hour behind New York City. As the towers fell and the Pentagon hit, we were under more scrutiny. A higher level of attention was brought to post; we were large and the number of DODEA run schools was insurmountable to others across the nation. The powers-to-be knew the quickest way to hurt the military was to hurt their families. For days, tanks roamed the streets, post was closed or near hard to enter for teachers who had dedicated their lives to teaching and loving military-dependent students like their own children. The sandy color of a tank positioned in the cutoff road between my elementary school and the elementary school it neighbored is something I won't easily forget. It was bleak in the background of colorful playgrounds meant to be an escape for us. In the days and years after, the process to coming on post changed, became more difficult; cars were searched more regularly, or maybe, these were things I now had attention on because of everything else in my life. Military uniforms changed from green to the same sandy color of that tank as the years past. As I grew older, I understood the necessity of these changes. 

This day, I was 9; today, I am 29. As years passed, friends and classmates would share their version of this day in conversation. None of us knew at the time, maybe at least not directly, how impactful this day would be for us years later. I am not a political person, and generally I would say I am a pacifist to some regards. The senseless loss of lives is something I cannot justify; however, this world is cruel and when you poke a hornet's nest, you will surely be stung. In this world, there is a lack of empathy, camaraderie, hope and, at times to me, compassion. I would be lying if I did not say I consciously turn my head away and advert my eyes from others asking for help - what if this was me? What if this was you? 

One deployment of many early in his tours, my father left and came home with a new tattoo - a symbol I came to know as a "hooligan" and a number of stars around it. After hearing the story, seeing the memorial erected, it is one I have come to cherish most of his tattoos because of the men I know he carries with him. Before an expected age, between familial deaths - both blood and non - I had been to more funerals than necessary; today, sitting and remembering the brotherhood of these men, I wish I could turn back the hands of time. Maybe this is why now I care so much, so easily for people - understanding in moments lives can change forever. 

This morning, I woke up before intention, no alarm set as it was the weekend and I am tired, exhausted from the day-to-day and the stress I place on myself for perfection, but this morning instead of immediately closing my eyes again, I stopped and paused; it was 6:48 AM, in New York it was 7:48 AM, a little less than an hour from the time the American world was forever changed 20 years ago. I thought about the planes used in the attacks on our nation; where were they in their routes at the time? How many people onboard were peacefully sleeping unaware of what was next? Who was already filled with apprehension and dread, anxious fliers to begin with? Who would never be able to tell someone for the first time, or the last time, they loved them? I paused for this moment, and then rolled back over and went to sleep - a luxury I may not have had in life if it weren't for those who dedicated their lives to our safety. A thank you will never be enough.