SEPTEMBER 11
It was an early sunny LA morning in my apartment on Rosewood and Gardner. I loved living in this neighborhood that was a stones throw away from CBS studios and the farmers market on Fairfax. I was living with my then fiancé and had just returned home from Chicago after playing a show with Eden’s Crush. I was warm in my bed, safe, and sound. On the other side of the country in New York City, this wasn’t the case. It was September 11, 2001.
Honestly I can’t remember if my Mom called me or who it was, but we turned on the tv and there it was. Something was bad. Really bad. And I was just in the city like a couple weeks before. What happened? What is happening? I went numb.
My first reaction was to call my bandmate Ivette who lived in the city and had just flown back from our show. I called. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called about a hundred times. No answer.
What is happening.
Then the news footage flooded my square tube tv. And it was evident. The Today Show. Good Morning America. Every channel. Same story. It was blood on the ground. It was blood on our country. The entire twin towers in NYC were falling down. To the ground.
The footage.
The planes.
The people crawling out the broken glass gasping for their life.
Falling to their death.
America the beautiful.
It was burning down.
I cried. I called Mom. I called Ivette.
Ivette wouldn’t answer.
Where was she? In the city?
In the buildings? What is actually happening?
10 am. She answers.
Crying. She says “I’m walking toward the bridge. I’m covered in dust. I don’t know what’s happening. I love you. I gotta go. I gotta call Dad. I love you.”
And then the news got real.
More footage.
More planes going down.
More evidence that terrorists have tried….. to take us all the way down.
Twenty years ago today, 3000 people would be spending their last night with family. Think about that for a second.
I’m still shook.
Forever shook.
Twenty years later it doesn’t sit well. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem like it could have actually happened.
But here we are.
My next door neighbor Dorothy was on that flight from Boston.
She was visiting her son.
Her name is there on the memorial.
It’s real.
It’s all so very real.
But here’s what I know today on Sept. 11, 2021.
My husband and I are taking our 3 kids to a University of Georgia football game today on September 11, 2021.
We live in the land of the free, where our children are safe from harm, and where they can go to school and learn to read
and learn to love in our great country of America.
We get to walk into a luxe college football stadium and eat pretzels and have beer and watch college football on a Saturday afternoon.
America did not burn down.
She was lit on fire and she survived.
This does not come without sacrifice.
Without brave men and women who walked into the fire to save our country, we would not have survived.
Without brave men and women on flight 93 we would be telling the story of horror.
But brave Americans walked the walk.
They stepped in.
They took control.
We will not be burned down to the ground.
American the beautiful stands tall.
And always will.
Today we honor our country.
The fallen. The warriors.
The innocent.
The USA.
We won’t back down. And we forever will honor our people till the day we die.
That’s America.
And that is us.
Ok. Go hug somebody. I Love you, mean it.
