No Ordinarys Days

I have a cousin who was born November 24, 1963, at the exact moment in which Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed. The family legend has always been that, while watching the news on a television at the maternity ward nurse's station of St. Eugene's Hospital in Dillon, SC, a young nurse screamed just as Jack Ruby's bullet pierced Oswald's skin. My Aunt Pat, already in labor for some 20 hours before, jumped, my cousin Glenda pushed forth and took her first breath. Two days prior my aunt was in that very same hospital with false labor pains when she learned of President Kennedy's assassination. So for as long as I can remember, Aunt Pat has always told us, like so many other Americans, she remembers exactly where she was on that day in November 1963; making it no ordinary day.

When I was in high school I took a job at a McDonald's in a nearby mall. Normally I took the bus to work but there were days when my mother drove me. On every occasion, we would get to the light just before the entrance of the mall and my mother would look at me, point to the gas station at the light and say "I was standing right there when I learned Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated." And, oddly enough, I could imagine my 23 year-old fresh faced mother's look of horror and grief as she heard the news. In telling me, she herself seemed to be transplanted back in time as she remembered day in June 1968; making it no ordinary.

Today as our nation remembers September 11, 2001, a new generation slowly and silently recalls where it was when fateful moment in time divided history making a clear demarcation of before and after, pre and post, prior to and since 9/11. We all remember, but we all go forward with more strength and resolve than ever.