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Before the tragic events that occurred on September 11, 2001, most of my friends, family and colleagues could never have imagined that such an event could take place.  Thinking back, the day almost seems surreal.  I will never forget where I was, what I was doing and who I was with; it is just one of those things.  Those moments are almost frozen in time and it makes me think about how this all could have come together.  All in all it makes me angry and extremely sad that it took something so powerful for us to realize that the price we pay for our freedom is vulnerability.
    Two days prior to September 11th, I was in New York City for the first time.  I flew up to visit my best friend who had just moved there, and to see my mom who was working there for the week.  It was one of the best weekends I had had in ages, one full of adventure, exploration and excitement.  I returned to DC on Sunday September 9th wishing I could stay longer but realizing that I had work to do Monday morning that couldn’t wait.  So Monday came and went with nothing to report.  
Tuesday morning, however, wouldn’t be so easy to forget.  Sitting at my computer, I received an alerted phone call from my father asking me if we had a TV in the office. Of course the answer was no, so he told me to log onto C-SPAN for information about a plane flying into the World Trade Center towers.  He reassured me that my mom was okay, but my stomach began to tighten and it wouldn’t stop.  Watching C-SPAN, I saw the second plane hit and then panic began to settle in.  The next hour or so is slightly blurry but, nonetheless, my computer became one of only two in the office that could maintain a link to a news network.  Finally, when rumors about the Treasury Department being evacuated started to spread, my phone began to ring off the hook with friends and family members urging me to leave the downtown area.  Being only a few blocks away from the White House did not sit well with most of the people with whom I spoke.  And soon, like thousands of other people in the downtown area, I too headed home.  Along the way I picked up friends’ children at their schools that were shutting down as the parents themselves could not get to because of the heavy volume of traffic that submerged the Washington metropolitan area.  There was panic, distress, and fear on people’s faces and I was among them.
In the following days and months, I wasn’t sure whether to be angry or cry.  Mostly I was in shock.  How could something like this happen? How could something this thought out have slipped though intelligence? How and why?  It just didn’t make sense.  And then someone told me something that put things in perspective. He said, “Some people deal with this every day, it just happens.”  My reply, “It’s not supposed to happen here.”  And that was the turning point.  It is all about how people handle the situations of today and how they prepare for the battles of tomorrow.  I am not sure how I would rate our country now except to say that it is improving, which overall is slightly comforting.