"I feel bad, serious bad," said my son Nathan, staring into his styrofoam bowl filled with Rice Krispies.
He was barely three-and-a-half years old. We were sitting in a Marriott hotel in Youngstown, Ohio. It was September 12, 2001 – the next day.
We were on our way home to Connecticut. We were shocked, confused, scared - 19 men had just slaughtered nearly 3,000 people.
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We'd been in Wisconsin on 9/11 – on an Air Force base to be precise. I was traveling with my husband, our son, eight-month-old baby girl, and my parents. At work on my first book, I was slated to speak to the Eighth Air Force Historical Society that sun-drenched September morning.
When we saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center on the morning news it simply didn't register. How could a commuter plane fly into a building on such a crystal clear day? Then we saw the second plane hit. The morning became surreal.
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We gathered the children, and not knowing what to do, we drove to the base. The guards let us on. The men of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, B-17 and B-24 airmen from another generation, were waiting for me in a gymnasium of sorts.
An enormous screen spanned the wall behind the lectern. CNN filled every square inch. I stood before it, Nathan's tiny hand wrapped inside mine. He stared at me – I stared at the screen.
"Mommy what's your face?" I heard him ask.
The north tower had just fallen. I still don't remember what I told him.
Of course we knew we wouldn't be flying home. So we immediately secured a rental car, big enough to seat six.
It was dark when we crossed into Indiana. None of us could reconcile the news reports with the beauty of cornfields bathed in moonlight.
Finally we reached the Marriott in Youngstown. We slept fitfully and after breakfast we started home.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania Nathan announced he was going to take his bulldozer and help the workers fix the tower. Hours later we crossed the George Washington Bridge. Smoke had turned the air a darker shade of night.
It was the next day. A new normal awaited all of us.
A world where color-coded alert levels crawled along the TV screens, where soldiers and bomb sniffing dogs patrolled Grand Central Station, and where security guards at New York's Museum of Natural History inspected the trunks of cars parking in the underground lot.
However, we hoped this new normal wouldn't include the level of vitriol certain politicians and self-styled community leaders have spewed of late. The anti-Muslim sentiment, threats to burn the Qu'ran, and other hateful acts don't belong here. It is a level of intolerance that makes me feel - as my son felt nine years ago - "serious bad."
On this day after we should we remember that even if we're not the same, we're one. We should remember that silence in the face of bigotry is never an option.
