When one looks back on the span of a lifetime the days all seem to run together. Short of a birthday, holiday, wedding, or funeral most days begin much the same and end much the same. This is not such a bad thing. Routine can be reassuring and having raised children who now have children most mothers can agree that "no news is good news." In fact, an uneventful day can be a blessing.
By the time I reached 58 years old, I had moved through the motion of over 21,000 of these days and most had been unremarkable but enjoyable and rich. Having said that, throughout our lifetime there are those occasional moments when we are stopped in our tracks and much like a landmark marks the spot of some place or event, a "time-mark" seems to plop down in our lifetime narrative. And for the rest of our years a person can ask us, "Where were you on the day…?" And we will be able to recall things in exact detail.
For instance, I was in high school walking into the gym at Bowling Green just after the lunch bell. There was a buzz of commotion coming from around the corner when a student rushed up to me and said, "The Space Shuttle exploded!" Normally, we would not have been involved in launchings of that sort, but on this particular take-off a teacher was on board the ship. As students we had been following it because this marked a turning point that not only rare astronauts were able to go into outer space but also an average person like us.
When I got home to talk to my parents about the event they immediately went into their memories of where they were when Americans landed on the moon. I was just a baby, but my brother was old enough to watch along with them in excitement. A large black and white television glowed in the small living room in Ozark, Alabama, and not long after my brother had all the astronaut G.I. Joes along with the spaceship and we drank Tang for breakfast.
I had just dropped the boys off to school one morning heading to Southeastern for an English class when a man on the car radio said, "If you can get to a television this is quite a sight. A plane has just accidentally crashed into one of the Twin Towers."
I pulled over at the gas station a couple of blocks away and walked in to look at the television screen just in time to see a second plane smash into the second twin tower and an ominous feeling was shared between myself and the news announcer as all onlookers realized this was not an accident after all.
From there the moments of that day were stamped on my brain for the thousands of days to come.
Hurricane Katrina is an event my sons still discuss as my parents would talk about the day Hurricane Betsy passed over their small apartment. I remember my grandmother talking about the day the Titanic sank. Older couples can still recall where they were when they heard the news JFK had been shot. And many women still live who will not forget the day they were told Elvis had died.
Those time-marks are unavoidable for us all as we take our turn on this Earth. They hit hard when least expected in the midst of a perfectly average day. Like loud crashing thunder in a blue sky they hit and remain with us as we walk out of the moment feeling a bit changed. But these moments also help us to cherish the mundane - the simplicity - the absolute beauty in an ordinary day.
