I Remember

When Tyler was younger, Tom and I tried to take him on business trips as often as possible. Even though it required a great deal of planning, it was worth the effort, one of the smartest things we’ve ever done as parents. The thing I most remember are the conversations we had during those trips -discussing things on a deeper level– addressing those questions humans have been pondering throughout the ages.

During a trip to New York, I asked him about historical events that had shaped his young life. Moments that define who you are, something so significant that you never forget where you were or what it felt like when you heard the news. I told him about my experiences – traveling in California with my mother, waking up early in the morning and hearing our host crying “they’ve killed Bobby, they’ve killed Bobby”, even though I was too young to really know who Bobby Kennedy was I still remember that lonely feeling – my frustration at having to miss my cartoons when my mother made me sit in front of the television to watch Watergate or the Moon Landing, informing me it was history in the making and ordering me to remember it. At that point Tyler really had nothing to add to the conversation, in the spirit of things he tried to make a case for the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, but even he knew it was a lame argument.

Fast forward several years, our little family is awakened by an early morning phone call. Too slow to make it to the phone, we listened to the message my mother left, telling us to turn on the tube. We didn’t take it too seriously, after all those Texans can never seem to get their heads around the time change, telling ourselves she was probably referring to something on Oprah. We continued to doze, asking Tyler to check the TV, drifting in and out of sleep before one of us had the presence of mind to ask him what was happening. I'll never forget the sound of his young voice, quietly telling us that a second plane had just hit the World Trade Centre.