Y'all Must Be Al Kaida.

From 2002 - 2006, I hated today. Around 2007, I stopped noticing. This year, I may even turn on the TV.

I hated photographs of the towers, because an image of two straight straight structures reaching into the skyline couldn't capture what it was like on the ground just after 9am. The image of the towers in their former state didn't help me remember the innocent days of looking up and using them as a compass. The images in my head that I really wanted to be in touch with are much different.

I remember walking around in a daze, as people covered in ash and blood wandered around me. I remember a woman on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge with tears streaming down her face, shoving a cop who was blocking all entry into Manhattan and running towards the other side, screaming. The thought that's been in my head for seven years is that I hope, with every fiber in my body, that she found whoever it was she was trying to get to. The image in my head that was the most nightmarish was the plume. It was so completely unreal, and so much a sign of our world coming to an end, and it was a large part of whatever it was that shut my brain off and just allowed me to walk the seven miles home without thinking. My daze lasted for three days. Another image in my head is noiselessly shuffling around downtown with my friends a few days afterwards, and seeing the countless faces of the missing up on walls, with phone numbers to call if you had any information. My heart breaking at that point was almost audible. The noise that was in my head for years was the sound of the bodies hitting the awnings with such frequency, and such a loud thud. The physical reaction that I remember most clearly was afterwards, when the first plane was permitted to fly over Manhattan again. My entire body choked up and froze as I heard the noise and looked up at the sky, ready to run.

I don't remember anything until 9/14, when the phones finally rang again, and my friend Trine, who had been trying to call from Copenhagen for three days, heard me say "hello" and uncharacteristically burst into tears. At that point, I woke up.

The political bullshit that followed didn't matter to me at the time. If you weren't there, I really didn't care what you thought. The "We'll Shove a Boot in Your Ass" song bothered me. I don't wear boots. You weren't there, so stop with the "we". Just shut it.

Today, seven years of bottled-up and Prozac-ed-down emotion came full circle for me. My daughter brought home a note from daycare that said "SHOW YOUR PATRIOTISM TODAY BY WEARING RED, WHITE, AND BLUE". My child does not have patriotism. She can't even figure out what a state is yet. I don't send her to school in a "Keep Congress Out of My Ovaries" tee-shirt, because it seems smarmy to make my kid walk around expressing my values in her clothing. However, if all the other kids (shudder) were wearing red, white and blue, I didn't want her to feel left out. On her bed, I laid out the bright pink dress she had chosen for herself, and a red and blue skirt with a white top, and asked her to choose. She chose pink. I asked her if she was sure. She said yes, and pulled the pink dress off the bed. She accessorized with a pink headband with a bow, and her new sneakers.

When we got to school, she walked next to me, twirling and skipping. A little girl in front of us with a navy blue skirt and white shirt and a red, white and blue bow in her hair stared at Malena with wide eyes. Her mother grasped her hand firmly and told the girl's brother, in a red, white and blue tie-dyed shirt, to hurry up. The little girl pointed to Malena, looked up at her mom, and said "Pink". Her mother stared straight ahead and pulled the kid's hand and told her to come on. Obviously, there had been a clothing battle in their house this morning. And in a clothing battle with a screechy three-year old, there are no real winners.

I stopped Malena and asked her, "If anyone asks you why you're not wearing red, white and blue today, what are you going to say?"

She smiled at me and said, "Pink makes me happy".