9-11-01 I was precepting two new graduate nurses on one of the telemetry floors. I remember being irritated that the call lights kept going off and no-one was around. I found a group in an empty room glued to the TV. The first plane had already hit. I remember thinking how odd that there were not safeguards for such an extreme pilot or mechanical error. I remember thinking how bad the fire was but also that these were the buildings that survived a bombing. I thought we should get back to our business of making a difference in our patients' lives. I couldn't fathom that this was terrorism; then the second plane hit.

We went back to work but one or another kept tabs on the TV and reported back about the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. We worked and we prayed.

Hard to describe how 9-11-01 has changed me.

I remember going to NY in my college days and being dragged to the top of the WTC despite my fear of heights. Now, I look back and I am glad I had that experience as it can never happen again but still, I hate that I had a reference for just how high those buildings were. Even now the image that is hardest for me is the people who chose to jump.

I remember thinking that there were so many SCA folks contracting for the Defense department. I dreaded hearing the news that the tragedy might get closer to home. I learned that my favorite CNN speaker, Barbara Olsen, had been killed in the Pentagon plane. Now there was a face to the tragedy.

My office is on the 10th floor with a pretty view. I remember the first time I saw a plane in the sky line of Columbia after they resumed flights...and the little jolt of anxiety or fear. I remember thinking how I would not have responded that way before.

Perhaps the biggest change for me is because I am a Mom. Having children means you extend your hopes and concerns beyond your generation into the next in a deeply personal way. In addition to hurting for all the wives, husbands, moms, dads and kids out there whose families were devastated, I hurt for Katie and Christie who were now without the illusion of American invincibility.

In a way, we joined so many others whose heartaches we only watched through the distancing of a TV screen. Ireland, the Middle East, Serbia/Croatia. I remember thinking back to the words of England's Queen during WWII, "Now I feel we can look the people of the East End in the face." Now, we too know what it feels like to be at risk, at war.

I have tried to compare the destruction of that dream with the personal journey of learning what you can and cannot control. You just think you can control the reaction of others and we just thought we could control what happens to us.

We can only control how we live. How we ensure that in addition to an altered sense of security, we also send into the next generation a sense of well being, love and patriotism.

That is my lesson from 9-11