It's Different Here...

9/11 brings up a host of different emotions for me. Last year, I wrote about where I was and what I was doing that day. This year, as I've been contemplating this day and what it means, my thoughts have been different.

In 2001, I was living in Utah. Though I felt connected to the events, I was far away from what was going on. When I moved to Massachusetts, I started teaching and was preparing to tell my students about the benefit concert we started in Utah in the hopes of doing something similar here. Then, on September 10, we had a faculty meeting. My principal let all of us know that under no circumstances were we to bring up 9/11 the next day. There would be a moment of silence, but there were to be no discussions in class. I felt myself getting frustrated until she explained why.

Five of our sixth grade students had a parent killed on one of the two United flights that originated at Boston's Logan Airport and ultimately crashed into the World Trade Center.

We didn't talk about the benefit concert in class on 9/11 that year. And I haven't since.

That's when I began to realize that 9/11 is different here. It's important all over the country - we should always remember what happened that day. But it's just different here. The connections are more personal. Towns all over Massachusetts have candlelight ceremonies to honor the residents that lost their lives that day. A moment of silence is observed at Logan Airport. Names of the Massachusetts residents who lost their lives are read in a ceremony at the State House similar to the one performed each year at Ground Zero. I found myself choked up several times today as I listened to the news reports of each ceremony.

It's a humbling, sobering, patriotic day. But it's different here.