story5124.xml

story5124.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

It was like any normal day. I got up out of bed and got dressed. Got my 5 year old daughter up and dressed ready for school. She ate breakfast and watched some cartoons. We put our puppy, Smokey, on the leash and walked to the bus stop. After I saw she was safely on the bus for school, I walk back home and turned it to the Today show like I did on so many mornings before that. But on this day, the first pictures I saw were of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center building. My mouth dropped open and all I could do was sit down on the coffee table that was behind me. I watched and listened in horror, fear and disbelief not sure if it was real or a movie trailer. The time seem to go by so slow. My husband is in the United States Navy and we were at Keesler AFB for him to attend the Weather school there. I was not even allowed to contact him because they had closed everything down until they knew what was going on. I called my mom, his mom and others in the family to make sure everyone was fine. I also had to keep myself calm because I was 5 months pregnant. All I wanted was to go get my daughter and bring her home, but I had no way of getting to her school because we only had one vehicle. All day I sat in front of the TV watching channel after channel of everyone's account of the event. The one thing that came to mind was to thank God it was not my family, but to have him watch out for everyone else's. When I gave birth to my son, it was the morning of January the 11th. Today, September the 11th he is 8 months old and I thank God his daddy is here with us to see all the milestones in his life, but at the same time, I think about all of those babies and kids who will never know there father's touch, or the sound of his voice. To anyone who is thinking about doing this to us again, I will tell you that you will NEVER hinder our spirits and you will only bring us closer as a nation. NEVER FORGET! Tamara, Joel, Julia and Jacob Motley