9/11

It would seem that everything that could be said about 9/11 has been said.  But everyone has their own particular story.  The way that my husband and I experienced the event probably put us outside the box.  As we went through those days we were repeatedly tempted to say, "But wait..."

On 9/11 my husband and I were driving back to our home in the Midwest from Portland Maine.  We were listening to an audio book in the car and driving through Pennsylvania at about the time the plane went down in that state.  We were returning from an Aids ride, bicycling 400 miles in 5 days in order raise money to find a cure for Aids.  We were clueless as to what the rest of the world was experiencing.

When we finally stopped at a rest stop a gentleman outside the building said, "It's kind of strange not seeing any airplanes."  By our blank expressions he could tell we hadn't heard the news and told us to go inside the building and watch the TV.  We watched the interminable replay of the towers coming down.  The assembled travelers stood in silence, having no words to express what they were feeling about the images before them.  My husband and I, for reasons we had yet to discover, felt outside of the group.  Not a part.  We later discussed our feelings and guessed that it had to do with the week we had just experienced.

We had just come from a week of living with a diverse group of 2000 riders and hundreds of support personnel.  Emphasis on the word, diverse.  We were a mix of ethnic, abled, sexually orientated, and any other group that you want to throw into the mix.  The group had one goal in mind - to help everyone succeed.  I especially remember a veteran of many such rides who rode through the group dressed as a super hero with his cape flying out over the back tire of his bike.  As he pedaled past the novices in the group he would shout out, "Go, you super heroes!  You can do it!"  There were no "we" and "they" in the group.  There was only "us" working together to accomplish a common goal of making everyone a success.  We came away from the experience with a different mindset than the mindset that we began with.

We knew that people did not have to be about groups, about "we" and "they."  We knew that people could work together for the common good.  We had experienced it and believed that this could be translated to the world.  We experienced 9/11 with a profound sadness, not only because of the event itself, but also because of what we knew and wanted the rest of the world to know.  We had, and still have hope for creation of a world where everyone can be a winner.  So may it be.