Yesterday was hard

for a lot of people. Selfishly I didn't want to think about the trauma so many other people were living through yet again. 

Of course it hit me in the face on the media. The media wasn't going to allow that sort of anniversary to go unmarked. It wasn't just the news service either. There were the "documentary" programs, the discussion, and more that I could have read, listened to, and watched. 

I did listen to some of the news while I was doing some ironing but I left the rest to other people. Where was I twenty years ago? What was I doing? Who was I with? How did we react?

I was here of course. I was working late at night when then the news came in. The Senior Cat had, thankfully, gone to bed and I managed to grab the phone before it woke him. A friend in the US came in a tinny-muffled way down the line to tell me what had just happened. He was safe and would finish the job he was doing for me but it might need to go via another route. Then he asked, "Who do you want me to check on Cat?"

I tried to think, then thought I would know soon enough anyway.  In an emergency you don't clog the lines of communication asking for information you don't need - however much you may want it.  I told him this. There was that moment of silence and then he said, "Yes, you're right of course."

Over the next few days people checked in to let others know they were safe or that people were missing. It was hard for us but much, much harder for so many others. R..., mother of my then six year old goddaughter, tried to shield her from the worst of it but they then lived close enough that it could not all be hidden from S....

Yesterday though I held on to the thought that S... and her parents lived through that. They moved back to London and then on to Singapore. S... is now a doctor. She is getting married in December. One of the motivations for her career choice was an awareness of the need for people who know what to do in an emergency. 

I am holding on to the thought that perhaps some tiny little bit of good has come out of "9/11".