To Everything There is a Season

And a time to every purpose under heaven.

Ten years ago, I slept the sleep of the innocent freshman in college - no cares or worries but making it to my 11AM class that day - International Relations 101.

A girl down the hall pounded, seemingly obnoxiously, on the door, yelling for us to wakeup and turn on the tv.

We turned on news coverage of the planes hitting and the first tower collapsing. I called my boyfriend to tell him to turn on his tv and after explaining to him it was worth waking up for, we watched together as the second tower fell.

I remember wandering around campus that day, in sort of a daze. I went to class at 11AM - I just didn't know what else *to* do. My mother worked in downtown DC and we had family friends at the pentagon but cell phone service was down and I couldn't get through. My great aunt lived in New York City and I didn't know how to find out it she was alright.

Since we were in school in Pennsylvania, many people were frantically trying to find news about relatives in western PA, in NYC, in DC. We were in the midst of it all.

The days blurred together, America just sort of soldiered on, and it all just became the new normal.

Never, though, in one million years, would I have guessed on that day ten years ago that I would now have two children with that man I called first, that we would have lived in six different places, and I would again be wandering around, going through the motions as I wait for him to come home.

I would never have thought that he would go off to a war begun by those four airplanes with men full of hate in their hearts.

And that we would be left to soldier on.