Afterward

What I remember most vividly is how quiet it was.
I mean, it's always pretty quiet out here, but for days after Sept. 11, 2001, there were no commercial flights, and the silence was pervasive. The rare times I heard a plane, I'd run outside and look up and wonder where it was going and what important person was on it. I'd check the news all day long to see if something else had happened, because there was a scary sense that there were no rules anymore; anything was possible.
And I remember the need we all had to talk about it, non-stop, and to be with other people. I remember going to the Y for our usual class and we just wanted to talk: Is your family OK? What have you heard? Cindy, our instructor, did her best to get class started, begging us, "Ladies, please, just give me an hour."
I was a little kid when President Kennedy was shot, but I remember where I was when I heard the news: a neighborhood boy cutting through our yard on his way home from school told my mother and me. Now people share their Sept. 11 stories: we still need to talk about it.