I remember it well.

Good Morning blog followers, I apologize profusely for being so absent. At the crack of dawn, as I woke my two youngest children for school, I took a quiet moment to really look at them as they attempted to rouse from sleep. The way the stretched into their limbs, pulling and pushing awakeness into their extremities leaving the comfort of dreams behind for a new day of reality. It's a tough thing, waking up and retiring the restfulness, we Poulin's especially seem to struggle with the roosters call. I sat beside Emma on the bed and took notice of her feline like posture, intently took note of how consciousness becomes her and she becomes it, she reaches up to the sky with her very tip of her long fingers and stretches hers toes to the depths, she opens up with a creak like the legs of my Grandmother's old ironing board. Her blond surfer girl hair twists about her face on the pillow and she reminds me of the pictures she herself composes of the sunshine, her strands are rays of light that frame the intense heat of who she is. I was quiet with myself inside as I drank her all in by the rising light that had just begun its cascade from the bottom of my bedroom window sills. A quiet child in the first moments of a new day are without a doubt one of the most beautiful sights to behold. When she became aware of me, her robin egg blue eyes not yet visible beneath the cloak of crusty little lids, she reached her arms into the air towards the space where she could sense my presence and said in her first voice of this September 11th, "Momma hug me." Of course I did, held her tight and exhaled all the air in my lungs so that my embrace could make more room for her in my arms, my chest could invite her into the place she belongs, encircled around the space where my heart beats. I then made my way into Matthew's room where he lay twisted up in blankets facing the wall with a fan about a foot from his body on super high setting, he apparently cannot sleep lately if he isn't in the throws of gale force winds. (Side note, was that expression born of Dorothy Gale and her twister? If it wasn't, is that why the author chose Gale for Dorothy's last name - if I had written it, I sure would have...) As I stood beside his bed looking down on him, I snapped off the fan and listened for the silence so I could hear my heart beat and try to hear his. It is a ritual of mine, to listen for his life sounds before I say my school morning words. My mind is always in a different place from my other children when I approach him sleeping, for he is the child that they said would not live. His living therefore, for me, is always something I need proof of and approach with a breath stuck in my lungs on pause, like the one you take before diving in the deepest end of a pool. I listen for his heart and mine together, like the day he was born and plopped on my chest, his bare and breathing chest a top mine, flesh of a mother and flesh of a child, the first breathing we do together that is not one inside the other. Matt was breathing and so I could too, our together hearts made that familiar music that gives me permission to live easy, something that for twelve years now I have been trying with all my heart to appreciate - the luck in my lucky and the gratefulness for the simplicity of just being.....If you have never read my epic 5 part blog about the months in my life reading up to the terrorist attack of 9/11, I suggest that you do - it seems a prerequisite to understanding all my blogs and my words, me in general. Today we mark the passing of another year since that fateful day that changed not only the Nation, but me and my son, the day that took so much and yet somehow, gave me everything that I need to be who I strive everyday since, to be.... Funny the way it is. I was aware when I woke this morning what this day is an anniversary of - this date, until the day I die, will never slide by me no matter what the chaos or busyness of life may throw at me - it will never be an "oh shit, wow I almost forgot today is September 11th" kind of day. I take this day very seriously and always will as I wrote once upon an anniversary in the epic blog of a tribute...Today is no less epic, I am more grateful today than I was in the days of composing that section of my personal history - so many more days of love have passed between then and now, my daughters legs have grown longer and Matthew's brain more witty - in fact I am thrilled to report he is beginning to come out of the boy haze that so often plagues young men between the ages of nine and a half and twelve, he is actually becoming a person I can tolerate being around without feeling perplexed and confused. Mothers of sons, can I get an AMEN? I am so blessed and lately more quiet, quiet is one of two things - the most deafening sound or the most welcome. I am pleased to announce that just as Matthew is becoming a person I can tolerate being around, I am as well, becoming someone I can tolerate being alone in the quiet with.....This has been a long well fought battle and I believe I have made great strides in winning the war inside myself, sigh - pause - tear up- be grateful - love my kids - love my life - know what matters - truth - composure in the face of truth - strength - humanness - forgiveness - LOVE. I get very emotional on this day as I remember the morning when my life changed and the lives of so many were horrifically altered for all of time. I promised my Grandmother I would always hear every name when they were read and appreciate them all the same, in the back of my head hear Matthew's first new born cry in the space between each one. We all remember things differently as each experience of this life, same event none the less, is so unique to who we are and what we are. For me personally, September 11th is a day where I let the light stream slowly and forget the alarm clock, I look at all 40 fingers and toes on my young children, I listen to them breathe, watch them stretch and creak, and remember that life can and will, turn on a dime....This life is precious, more precious than I have words for even on my most emotional and verbose days. The preciousness comes in the simplicity of loving those that you love. Period end of story nothing more to teach. No fancy car, no new iphone, no possession or position or titles - just being able, each day, to LOVE the human beings you love. I guarantee, every family member who lost a loved one on 9/11 would say that there is absolutely and unequivocally nothing else in this one life that matters.....Today as we remember all those who were lost, I say with equal time, look at those in your own life who were not, and imagine for just one moment of silence that they were gone - just gone. And then, hold them with all your might and for another minute of silence, don't let go, let all the love you have for them seep into the nooks and crannies of their spirits so that they have the same experience and then spend the next moment of silence reciprocating the love exchange. I think that is 3 minutes well spent and a damn worthy tribute. Do it.....Go.....Now. To all the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, I hold you in my three minute embrace of appreciation and love - my heartfelt prayers are with you all.