9/11’s impact isn’t limited to today’s anniversary

• Flickr: 9/11 photo
• 9/11 is an event I now see from afar.

This marks the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that it wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I was focused on getting breakfast on the table. Emptying the dishwasher. Making sure my wife didn’t forget her coffee. I thought first of the daily tasks that add up to a morning.

Only when I sat down at this keyboard did the ripples of 9/11 hit me again. I stopped moving, and the events of that day caught up. They came with the faint taste of bile and the realization that, on its 11th anniversary, 9/11 is both squarely in the past and something I’m still processing.