<p>We live in the DC area so DS definitely has some memories of the day. Not so much about the hijackings themselves, but of DH staying home from work and the TV on all day (we never have it on during the day). And of me being stuck downtown and not getting home until late. And then of course the constant talk in the ensuing days and weeks thereafter. Thankfully we did not know anyone who lost their lives that day. My office at the time was mere blocks from the Capitol and I remember hearing that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed there. </p>
<p>My kids definitely remember. We’re also outside DC, but my hometown lost the most amount of people outside nyc. My brother worked at the WTC but was at another site, my friends hubby worked on wallstreet, and cousins owned a shop down there. To this day my brother never spoke again about seeing the people jumping out of the building. The governor closed the schools that day, though my kids were at a private school that remained open, they were right near a nuclear power plant. I don’t believe kids younger than ours actually remember the day itself.</p>
<p>We are in upstate NY, about 200 miles from NYC. We didn’t personally know anyone affected at the time. However, my daughter’s HS freshman English teacher lost her husband in the WTC. I know Mrs. K assigned a reading that she felt would get the kids thinking about how and why it happened.</p>
<p>D’s campus (RIT) did hold a remembrance vigil with taps and flag plantings this morning.</p>
<p>On a brighter note, D and I are FB chatting and she did remember my birthday.</p>
<p>Happy Birthday 12dandelion!
S flies to college this Sunday… finally we will join the club. He has all his stuff spread all over his room, but isn’t packing any of it. He seems unsure of how to go about it unless I do it with him, which rather alarms me. His older brother did all the logistics on his own and didn’t want me involved in packing.
H and I will drive down to UCLA in two weeks and move him into his permanent dorm room.</p>
<p>Happy Birthday 12dandelion!! I’m so glad you heard from your D!</p>
<p>Happy Birthday @12dandelion! DD chatting would be the best present! And @Minnymom - hope your DS’s launch goes smoothly (once he packs!). It must have been hard for him waiting around so long to go off to school. My DD was the last to go of her friends and I think all the goodbyes she had to say were the hardest!</p>
<p>I remember exactly where I was on 9/11 but don’t think DD does. It was her second day of Kindergarten. They’ve talked about it each year in school and that’s mostly why she “remembers”. So many were affected in the Boston area. Her longtime daycare provider’s husband was supposed to be on one of the flights to LA but had decided he was too old to fly out and give a presentation the same day so had left the night before. So luckily he was safe but stuck in LA. I had changed her daycare that month so she wasn’t there at the time but went back later that month. And she worshiped him (“King ____”) so I’m so glad he was safe. She spent a couple of years volunteering for a 9/11 remembrance community event during high school and I think having the widow personally thank her for her small contribution brought it all home. And clear, beautiful days in September remind me of sitting outside with neighbors looking up at the skies without any planes overhead (we’re on a flight path to Logan so we usually see planes high up on a daily basis). Yesterday was a day like that, not so much so today weather-wise.</p>
<p>Happy Birthday @12Dandelion! Another September birthday. We have a lot of those in our family. Glad you were able to chat with your d - that always makes the day brighter. </p>
<p>@StaceyNeil -The girlfriend isn’t a surprise? So many young people feel hampered by high school and college is where they feel like they can be themselves. It’s nice that she can share that with you.</p>
<p>@MImiami - Hopefully this is just a temporary setback for your D. It does seem to go in cycles though, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Had a long texting session with Spygirl yesterday. She is loving school and is happy with most of her classes. She has a close knit group of friends that she hangs with, which makes me happy. She and the roomie get along but will never be BFF’s, but that’s okay. It’s all good as long as they’re civil with one another.</p>
<p>No laundry issues yet, but I didn’t expect any. She’s been doing her laundry since she was young and last summer had to figure out how to use laundromats in french - using euros. </p>
<p>Spygirl did a better job than Max and I did. Especially after we got locked inside one night. Good thing we’re spies and know how to pick a lock!</p>
<p>S got his UROP project (research project) which will serve as his work study also so he’ll start making money on Tuesday. His Tweet today is about how kids his age are probably the youngest ones to remember that day. He definitely remembers. They tried to keep the news from the K-1 kids but they talked to the 2-5 graders. He was in a 3rd grade classroom for reading buddy time and he heard about it. He remembers and he remembers me picking him up that day and talking about it at dinner. I tried not to let them see any news coverage of it because some of the images were so horrific. A girl on my daughter’s soccer team (which I coached) was the niece of Todd Beamer, the man on Flight 93 who said “let’s roll”. We took up a collection for his family. </p>
<p>My daughter was in her second full day of Kindergarten less than half a mile from Ground Zero. I couldn’t get back to Manhattan to pick her up and it took me a while to figure out how to get her out of school and much later, home to Brooklyn. The wonderful principal of her school wound up sleeping in the building with a few kids whose parents couldn’t get there to pick them up. It was a really crazy time in NYC. I was really, really zombified for a few weeks afterward. She seemed ok and only acted out a little two or three weeks later when I got my bearings. Years later, she told me she was really angry at me for being so preoccupied.</p>
<p>I know there were inconveniences everywhere, and that the whole country was rooting for us in NYC. But the next few months were a nightmare throughout lower Manhattan especially but also throughout the city, with travel restrictions, bomb scares, and other craziness, especially the first few weeks. It seems hard to believe how much NYC has bounced back, but it wasn’t easy. This morning I was thinking how overwhelming it was to turn on the TV and see my city under attack and my baby stuck across the river.</p>
<p>My daughter was in a citywide chorus here and this is the first year in a while that she didn’t perform either at Ground Zero with the families or at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I didn’t hear from her today, but that’s ok.</p>
<p>Happy birthday, 12dandelion! I am so glad your daughter called.</p>
<p>My boys clearly remember 9-11. My oldest son was in the fifth grade in the building where I taught. He knew what had happened because his teacher’s son called from Baltimore, saying that there was concern that there could be an incident in the Harbor (fortunately, there was not). The school is just four miles from a large military base here in VA. So we had parents streaming in all day to pick up their kids, fearing an attack on that military base. The younger son was in pre-school (he later skipped a grade). He got to my school, and I explained to him and his brother that we needed to stay a little later, because my principal had asked if we could. She wanted teachers and other adults around if the buses brought back kids who came home to no one being there, because their folks worked at the Pentagon or were stuck in traffic. He was pretty content with staying a little later. I just put on a movie to keep him occupied.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the birthday greetings! Once I got to Skype with D the whole day brightened for me, even though it was cold and drizzly out my window. Husband and I went out for a very nice dinner at a white tablecloth kind of place, which we rarely do. D messaged again a bit to tell me about something funny at dinner, and then we had cake, and then I was ready to relax with HGTV. A very quiet but happy birthday, which is all I’ve wanted since 9/11/01.</p>
<p>Thank you also for sharing your memories and stories. I’m glad D is now in college with kids from the NYC area and the DC area, kids who had a different experience than our admittedly sheltered view. My poignant memory of the day was when I turned on the TV around 9:45 and my S’17 (then age 2) said ‘oh no mommy, fire on building.’ We did not watch any more news coverage that day until both kids had gone to bed. </p>
<p>A few days later when they revealed the flight paths of the planes that hit the WTC, the other bus stop moms and I realized one of the flights had been very close to our area before it turned South and followed the Hudson to NYC. That was chilling. And then we didn’t see bus stop dad Daryl for quite a while; he’s a NYS trooper and had so many other things going on.</p>
<p>To get this back on the college track: are your kids coming home for Columbus Day weekend? Our D said last night that she wants to, but a late class on Friday, now with a field trip, is making catching a bus or Amtrak a little dicey. So I suggested she try to find a ride. </p>
<p>DD wants to come home for Columbus Day weekend, especially because that’s also her high school homecoming football game and so she could join the pep band for the night. She’ll have to go back to her college Saturday morning to march for <em>their</em> football game, but we’re close enough to make it work 
.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure DS has class on Columbus Day and in any case has a game the Saturday before so he won’t be coming home. He won’t even make it home for fall break at the end of October given his athletic commitments. </p>
<p>But as I said before, we’ll be seeing him quite a bit before Thanksgiving anyway. DH decided last night that he and DD would fly out the weekend of October 4 for the home game that day, and that he would also fly out for the last home game on November 15. I am going to parents weekend October 18, and driving to at least 2 away games and maybe flying to a third. </p>
<p>Speaking of this weekend, DS is taking advantage of the bye and hopping on a bus to see his best friend at Michigan. They are going to the game and I’m sure will have a great time together. There are at least three other recent alums from his HS there so they might just meet up. </p>
<p>Yes, D called me today just to chat (which was so nice!) and she definitely wants to come home for Columbus Day. They have 4 days (2 school days off.) I am hoping she can get a ride home, though, and won’t need to be driven by me, because we’ll be driving down there 4 days later for parents weekend!!!</p>
<p>Had a very quick visit with DD today as I brought a rug down for her room and personally delivered a care package. It was wonderful to see her! Got to see her roommate again and she says things are going well. And met another couple of her friends. Plus I brought the dog with me for a visit and she was very excited to see him. He was bouncing around and exploring all the new smells and really “helped” with laying down the rug in her room - settled himself right down in the middle as we were trying to move it around! She was thrilled to be able to show him off (and he is really cute). It was good to be able to see her and talk with her to really see how things were going. She’d auditioned for some a capella groups and hadn’t gotten a callback and really seemed okay with that. I think it helped that one of her friends also auditioned and wasn’t called back. Now that they know that’s off the table they can now figure out other things to do since they’re not holding rehearsal times free in their schedule.</p>
<p>As far as Columbus Day goes, she is planning on coming home as are all her close friends (I believe - one is a question). It will be great for the girls to all be together again and be able to catch up. In the meantime, all us mom’s are getting together tonight! Maybe we’ll take a group picture of us and send it off to the girls! I think we’re all missing our daughters but we’re also missing all the other girls they were always hanging around with!</p>
<p>D is coming home mid-October for 4 days. She’ll have to take the shuttle to the airport, which we already booked.But we’re going to see her in 2 weeks for parents weekend. My son who is a junior does not want to come home. He thinks the traveling is too much of a pain when it’s usually right around mid-terms. We won’t see him until Thanksgiving. </p>
<p>D pulled her first all nighter last night. She had 2 tests this morning and studied with a friend in the library. She’s taking this all very seriously, and figuring out that it’s better to study over the course of a week instead of trying to cram it all in over night. </p>
<p>S won’t be home for fall break, as he has a cross country meet in Florida that weekend. Hoping to see him for Thanksgiving, but cannot make flight arrangements because his team has a chance to qualify for nationals. If that happens, he’ll stay near school, he said. Guess we’ll drive down and see him. Talked with S last night. He was tired, which may explain why he was a bit short with me when I asked some things. I could sense that something could be bothering him, but he did not say anything. The older son, he’s the talker. You always know what’s up in his world. The younger son, not so much. That said, I know that S is getting his work done for all of his classes. Enjoyed pledging to his fraternity (no hazing). We chatted about time management, and S says that this is not an issue for him. He does his work and studying in the team’s study hall sessions (five hours a week). If he needs more time, he said that his fraternity requires two hours of study hall a week. </p>
<p>D has 2 days off at the beginning of Oct. for Fall break. I’m hoping she’ll come home. Her classes end by noon on Fridays so she could make it home (@8 hrs) and drive back on Tues. If not, I’ll see her mid Oct. for parents weekend. H and I are going to make a mini-vacation of it and rent a nearby cabin in the mountains that week. </p>
<p>S will be home the weekend of Oct. 3rd (high school homecoming) and then again for the “fall break”, which includes Columbus Day, I believe. </p>
<p>So fun reading about all the '14s at school. DS just wrote his first article for the school paper. </p>