I was 3-years-old. All I remember is my father watching TV, and then suddenly going stiff. He ran to the phone and called someone. And someone else. And someone else. I sat there watching him, my older brother playing with Hot Wheels cars. I was complete oblivious to what happened. 5 years later, our class talked about the Twin Towers. How a plane destroyed it. A couple years later, I learned that it was the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon was hit too. I didn’t know what to think. Sadness? Anger? Despair? Just last week I read an article about Flight 93. It was hijacked and the passengers sacrificed themselves so that it’s target, the Capitol, would not be destroyed. Then I realized what I should have felt. Honor. Liberty. Unrelenting power of our country. Because even though we lost thousands of lives, even though we seemed to lose all our faith, we still fought back. It took 10 years for me to understand what the tragedy of 9/11 was. And now I know what our country really felt. Hope.