My parents could remember what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My young life was touched by the war. Not in a serious way but growing up at a time children were silenced when the radio news was on and knowing our parents were upset over something we couldn't understand. They talked about ration stamps and things they couldn't buy. Being scared by the noise when tanks drove down our road seems silly when children in other places were close to or in the fighting. They had a true reason for fear. I remember the day my first stepfather drove us to San Diego with the car lights on and he honked the car horn and we were told the war was over. We didn't really know what a war was.
My mother was again divorced and married to a man that had gone through the worst of fighting in North Africa and then in southern Italy. Now they would say he was PTSD. Then he was just angry. My mother didn't know that he had married right after the war and had terrorized his wife by holding a gun to her head. Being married to my mother didn't help. After she left him, he came by where we were living and pulled her into his car and took her out on a narrow road in the woods and beat her up, threw her out of the car, and then tried to run over her. Some people drove down the road and saved her. My Great Uncle Burt had fought in WWI and came away with his own troubles. He talked about the war to us as we got older. We grew up knowing that war didn't help anyone. Uncle Burt left his medals in his suitcase and never went back for them.
Looking back it seems that there were a lot of wars in my lifetime. My cousin was over in Vietnam and suffered from agent orange and a smashed up back from a chopper crash. He died recently. I remember him as a lively two year old and now he is dead.
I was still managing the storage when the planes hit the towers. I had Hailey ready for school and was getting ready to leave to bring her up here when I saw the burning tower on the TV. I had started Hailey in school up here because we would be moving up here when the storage was sold. E.R. fed her breakfast and took her to school and I went back down to open the storage. That day I needed to turn off the TV but stood there and watched in disbelief as the tower burned. The news people were not sure just what had happened yet. The second tower was hit just before we left the house. I felt stunned. I felt stunned for days afterward and still when I think about 9/11 will always remember that hollow dreadful feeling. I can't listen to the voices or watch the movies of 9/11. It is just too tragic. I can listen to survivors tell their stories. And be glad for them that they made it through. I am getting old and think that I need to think about peace and something good happening in this world.
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