Amused Cynic

Today is a memorial day, as it should be. Hard to believe it was so long ago, because I tritely remember it “as if it were yesterday.” So many things have happened since, that’s what makes it clear that it really was a long time ago. Both of my kids have graduated from high school (one has now graduated from college, and the other is now a college sophomore!) Back then, they were in 10th and 6th grade, respectively! School was closed as an emergency measure that day…there were still unaccounted-for planes in the air, one of them, at least, over Pennsylvania…

Three of my four relatives who were deployed to “sunny Afghanistan” in the first days after 9/11 are now retired from their military careers, with the fourth starting to think about it. They came home with chests full of medals, but thankfully not a Purple Heart among them, fathered several new nieces and nephews and cousins in their “spare time,” and have missed seeing their own kids graduate from high school and transition on to college, with about a dozen combat tours among them.

I passed the half-century mark, and my marriage made it to “silver” status.

As I write this, in the space between 7:30AM and 8AM, the thing was probably going down. Throats were being slashed, people were praying, wondering what to do, thinking of their families. I was preparing for a meeting….I was the chair of a local political campaign. My father called and told me to “turn on the TV.” I called the woman who was hosting the meeting and told her I couldn’t make it, it just seemed too trivial a thing to do on the morning of 9/11/01. “But I made you breakfast,” she said. I told her to turn on the TV.

We also witnessed, over these last Seven Years, a startling replay of the Abraham Lincoln presidency. Mocked, reviled, hated, but determined to see his country through a great crisis, George W. Bush will eventually be remembered as a president who became great because of the emergency that was dropped in his lap, and the determination with which he dealt with it–mistakes and all.

The Anchoress offers remembrances and prayers.
Neo-neocon is also thinking of the Seven Years
Laurie Kendrick on Seven Years Later
Commenter StickerShock directs us to the antecedent of Barack’s “bitter clingers” nonsense.
Zed and Sam remember the other twins…