The day we decided to have kids.

Ten years ago, Evan and I walked out of the Times Square subway station to a eerily quiet city. One guy was loudly proclaiming that it was an attack, they hit the Twin Towers with a plane. We followed everyone's gaze to the big news screen, and we saw the second plane hit the tower. Evan grabbed me and we started to walk uptown to the DC office. We passed tons of people standing on long lines waiting to use the pay phones.

We made it to the office and crowded together into the fifth floor conference room to watch TV. I wanted to be around lots of people and try and consume as much information as possible. I've always been a news junkie. Evan wanted to be alone in his office, working. He processes things differently than I do. He's more of a measured-gaze kind of guy.

I kinda freaked out and dragged Evan into the conference room after a while. Evan and I and our work family watched the towers fall together. I remember when the second tower fell, I ran out into the hall like an idiot saying the tower fell! the other tower fell!

Over the course of a few hours we saw Broadway empty out, and eventually fill up with people walking uptown, holding shoes in hand.

The president of DC was in the room with us, and he told us to go home. We couldn't go home; we lived in Mt Kisco and there were no trains running in or out of Manhattan. Evan's assistant lived at 57th and 1st, and a group of us walked there. We walked down the middle of 57th Street and everytime we heard one of the fighter planes overhead, the whole city ducked. AT that point we still thought there was an unaccounted-for plane. It was, of course, Flight 93, which had been ditched by brave civilians at that point. But every plane we heard on that long, weird walk was one that we thought would come down right on top of us.

We spent a couple hours at the apartment watching TV. I remember very little of it. In retrospect, I was in shock. I remember that we found out about the Pentagon there. Somebody fed us tea. There was a balloon in the apartment and its jollity mocked us. It was Gillian's boyfriend's birthday the day before.

Our cell phones didn't work, but we managed to email everyone on our email list before we left work and let them know we were okay. I had a couple beloved friends with no knowledge of Manhattan's geography who were petrified for us. We were worried about our Joellyn and Katy, who were both downtown and we could only get tiny scraps of cellphone conversation before the network cut out.

Finally we heard rumors that Grand Central (my 2nd favorite place in the world, after the Temple of Dendur) was sending trains out. We left the apartment and made our way down the East Side. We saw huge lines of people waiting to give blood at the hospitals. We saw the fighter jets fly over our beloved city, far too close for comfort. And every time we looked down any of the big Avenues, we saw an awful plume of smoke.

We made it to Grand Central and were sheparded onto a train, any train, that was going to our line. I remember seeing the hollering uniformed employee of Metro North that corralled us into the right train and thinking "Thank God, somebody is taking charge. Somebody knows what to do." We were on the most crowded, most quiet train ever and made it home to our little condo in Mount Kisco around 9pm.

Evan and I laid down in our bed that night and decided that this was it. We needed to have kids, and we were going to try.

A little less than two years (and one blisteringly awful miscarriage at 13 weeks) later, our son Oscar was born.

9/11, to me, was always a few things. The day I was really grateful that my husband and I worked and commuted together. The day we decided to start trying for kids. And the moment that, even though at the time I was living in suburban Westchester, that meant I will always consider myself to be a New Yorker. I lived there for a few years, I worked there for many years, and when the terrorists attacked, they targeted a piece of my past and my heart. The only thing they succeeded in doing was making sure that that part of my heart will always be in New York City, and I will vote and donate and fight to keep my beloved city the place it is.

Ten years later, I had the most housewifey day. I woke up at 7, checked my favorite Mormon blogs, and scrambled up some eggs from the farmer's market. It took me about fifteen minutes to realize I had slept through the moments of silence, the readings of the names that has been part of my calendar for the past ten years. A friend works for NPR and WNYC and had linked to a couple of concerts commemorating 9/11. I listened to this one while making breakfast and have bookmarked this one at my most favorite place in the world to listen to and reflect on this week.

I went to see The Help at 10am for six bucks at our local awesome movie theater. With our move I've realized that sometimes I need art (a movie, a TV show, a Broadway musical) to let me let go with my emotions and have a good, wretching healing cry. The Help did that in spades.

I came home to my big guy who was pissed that the 20 hour playdate/sleepover wasn't 24 hours. (I missed him, what can I say?) We cobbled lunch together and made our way to Lucy's preschool open house. The boys complained bitterly until they got there and saw the watertable full of a glue-and-water mixture, with a few plastic dinosaurs to drown. It's Playhouse in a church basement, and it's run by great people. I am so grateful we found it.

We hit a local ertsaz Carvel for ice cream on the way home.

Evan and Arlo went to our local horror emporium to drop off a box of books for store credit. Seriously, we have here independent businesses that occupy two full storefronts that sell only horror related media and merchandise. Evan took a box of books that I had excised from our collection and gotten $75 credit for it. John Landis is signing his new ($50) book next month and Evan is tickled that he can buy it at this great local business with our credit (because we couldn't afford that outlay in cash out of pocket) and meet one of his favorite movie people.

They then went to our local model train store. Well, our local train store that is closest to us. There's quite a few here. Magnolia Park in Burbank is an example of what downtown South Orange could be. Granted, all of it's many antique furniture and vintage clothing shops are boosted up by the local film industry. But Magnolia Park is about two miles long and I have yet to see an empty storefront.

Evan and Arlo picked up the rest of us and we checked out Universal Citywalk and had a lovely dinner at Buca di Beppos, an old Healy-Metcalf family tradition.

A friend of mine from Maplewood posted this on Facebook tonight:

I cannot think of a better way to pay respect to those we lost 10 yrs ago than by starting this day in profound mourning and finishing it with joy and merriment. And that is what I did. Rest In Peace, good people. I will never forget you.

Thanks for that sentiment, Jon. I feel like we did that today.

9/11/01 will be many things to me, but at the end of the day, it will always be the day Evan and I decided to have kids.