Reflective

As with many people around the world, I have spent some time today thinking about the last 10 years, about where my life was a decade ago and the awful events that happened in America.

I was working in my office in Chicago, when my ex-husband rang me and told me to turn the telly on.  He sounded almost hysterical.  I walked into my boss's office, interrupted a meeting and told him he'd better turn the TV on.  For once, he did as I had suggested and we stood there in his office, watching the events of 11th September 2001 unfold live, as they happened.  I can remember feeling my skin tighten, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I went icy cold.  The whole office was silent except for the sound coming from the TV.  We all knew people who lived in Manhattan, some of us had friends who worked close to the WTC.  A year before, my ex had been working there, but he'd only been there for 6 months before coming back to Chicago.  This was something that had never happened before, America was being attacked on home territory.  This country for the first time, felt vulnerable.  There was a chink in it's armour.  People panicked.  All tall buildings in the Loop were evacuated.  Public transport ceased to go into the centre of town and companies sent their employees home early.  Air space was closed and the skies went quiet.  It was one of the most bizarre times that I have ever experienced and not something that I would want to go through again.  Slowly over the next week or so, people went back to work and a relatively normal life resumed.  But many Americans refused to fly.

I had to fly home 3 weeks after the attack.  Security was tight but the airport was almost empty, as was the plane.  People were scared.

10 years on and there is still heightened security.  People are still cautious.  But life goes on, we can't sit back and wait for something else to happen, or else we would never live.  It is important to remember and mourn the loss of life, as we do for the Holocaust, but it is also important to teach our children to be fair, to not generalise and that there are always two sides to every story and that no two people are the same, no matter where they come from.